


Rapidly Becoming

by Ayes



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Magical Inheritance, Malfoy Manor, Missing Persons, Mostly Gen, Nesting, Post-War, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2019-07-07 02:32:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 40,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15899118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ayes/pseuds/Ayes
Summary: When Draco goes missing, Harry inherits Malfoy Manor and makes it his own.My love letter to Running on Air, House Proud, Stately Homes of Wiltshire, Wild, and so many others. To those authors: thank you.Title is inspired by the self-discovery of being eighteen years old, by making something your own, and of course by the famous quote "Harry, however, had never been less interested in Quidditch; he was rapidly becoming obsessed with Draco Malfoy."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [astolat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astolat/gifts), [eleventy7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleventy7/gifts), [Seefin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seefin/gifts), [waspabi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waspabi/gifts).



> [Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/1252977635/playlist/6r4oUvobYN5n88Kbnx4zXz?si=XIbRTKgqR2mpdmMPboJqhA)

The war had been over a month before anyone realized Draco Malfoy was missing.

The elder Malfoys were dealt with, and so no one had gone looking for him at first. Lucius had died when another Dark lackey aimed their wand sideways in the last battle, some ice-cold revenge from the long years of infighting. Narcissa had caught a cold while awaiting trial in Azkaban, which carried her off swiftly after. Harry had felt a whiff of regret when he’d heard about it: she’d been a mixed bag, not all evil. He spared a thought for Draco, even, feeling something like reluctant pity when he remembered Draco’s pointy eleven-year-old face, mocking Harry for being an orphan.

“War breeds orphans,” Hermione said darkly, when he mentioned it. Ron looked at her in alarm, but tipped back his beer without a word. They’d waited ten days after the final battle to truly believe it was over, twenty before they felt brave enough to go into the Leaky. Of course well-wishers had overwhelmed them there, so now they sat in a Muggle bar, three weeks of peace behind them and a whole lot of unknowns ahead.

Ron and Hermione were leaving in the morning, taking two Apparition points to Australia. Ron was hesitant to leave his family so soon after Fred’s funeral, Harry could tell, but Hermione had been saying things like _war breeds orphans_ lately and even Ron understood where his warm heart was needed most.

“Where is Malfoy, anyway?” Ron was saying now, desperate for a distraction from the dread radiating off of his girlfriend.

Harry could smell the bait, but he took it. “No one’s said. Probably fucked off to France or something, I should ask Kingsley if they’ve got him.”

“Oh Harry, no,” Hermione said, her faraway stare focusing back on him. Ron sagged a little behind her, relieved. “Please don’t get all wrapped up in following Draco Malfoy around again.”

“Yeah, mate, war’s over. You’re off the clock. Sleep, go ‘round mine, I won’t even be around to get all weird about you and Gin.” Ron clapped him on the back in an encouraging sort of way.

“I’ll definitely go to the Burrow,” Harry promised, thinking with a twinge about how much harder Ginny laughed with Dean, the months they’d been together while Harry was sleeping in a tent somewhere. Ron shrugged and got up to buy another round. Hermione rolled her eyes after him, but her expression softened a bit as Harry watched. 

“You’ll find out if he’s dead soon anyway,” Hermione assured him in the matter-of-fact way she had talked about school, peering into her pint glass. “What with the M- the Manor and all. Saves them a trial.”

“Are you okay?” Harry whispered, touching her hand.

She clasped his hand back. “None of us are,” she whispered back, a touch of wry, horribly adult humor in her voice.

“Tell me the Manor thing,” Harry requested, voice still low.

Hermione sighed. “It’s the property. He’s the last Malfoy now, right? So if no one can find him, no one will be able to claim ownership of the house. It’s a whole thing, ownership of magical homes are tied to blood if no sale is made. Actually, Harry…” she fixed him with a suddenly-keen look. “You’re the closest Black heir.”

“That’s right,” Ron jumped in, coming back with three pints held close to his body. “If Malfoy’s dead, that house is yours. Plus you guys are cousins, right?”

“Distantly,” Harry admitted, put out. “By marriage. Of dead people. They disinherited Sirius, anyway.”

“Oh, you can burn someone off a family tapestry, but you can’t undo blood rights,” Ron asserted, seemingly pleased to know something. “Let us know if you get the house, yeah? We can burn the fucker down.”

“Mmm.” It was tempting, thinking of the Manor burning. Hermione looked far away again, and Ron bent toward her, urging her to drink her beer as though it was medicine and he were Molly Weasley.

Harry sipped at his pint, but couldn’t taste it. Draco Malfoy couldn’t be dead. Harry would _know_. He felt, somehow, that he would know. Someone would have told him. Or something would have shifted in the universe, some final veil unlifting like it had when Voldemort had died. Not like Malfoy was anything like Voldemort.

Quite the opposite.

The last time Harry had seen Draco, he’d been fleeing the battle with his parents. At the time Harry had been enraged. The Malfoys were cowards, he’d thought, all of them unwilling to stand and fight even for the Lord they claimed to love. Maybe he’d been staring after them angrily moments before the other Death Eater had killed Lucius — it couldn’t have been long after. In the clashing, confused timeline of that final day, everything tended to get mixed up in his head. Fighting. Dying. Returning. Voldemort, dead on the ground. Hagrid, weeping tears the size of marbles. Malfoy’s white-blond head, disappearing against the tides of that mass of evil.

He must have made it out with Narcissa. Somewhere between their desperate flight, her capture, and her sentencing, Draco had escaped. He was probably in some Parisian apartment now, planning lavish funerals that no one would go to. Considering what Narcissa had done for Harry, what Draco had done in pretending not to recognize him, Harry didn’t even begrudge him his freedom. Not after losing his parents.

But he simply couldn’t be dead. For whatever reason, some instinct Harry couldn’t explain, he would have bet his magic on it.

So the next day, when he saw Ron and Hermione off, it was a shock to see the day’s headlines. The Apparition point was a newsstand on the corner of Canon Row and Bridge Street, charmed to mask the sight of anyone slipping inside from those passing back and forth to Westminster Station. Hermione let herself in, and then Ron, and they peered out at Harry from a frame of glamour magazines and tabloids. 

“You will be okay, won’t you?” Hermione was saying, clutching her endless bag, now filled with sunscreen and her childhood photos. “Harry?”

“He’ll be fine, Hermione, don’t worry,” Ron said, but Harry was staring at the paper.

MALFOY HEIR MISSING, the Prophet said, above a pixelated photo of Draco, his face cropped out from some gala shot with his father. Lucius’ shoulder still remained half in-frame, looming up and over to the side, casting a shadow on Draco’s elegant, blinking face. Elegant? Pointy, he meant.

“Mate?” Ron said now, starting to peer around at the papers, which had flicked back into The Guardian as a woman passed by. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Harry said quickly, and pressed forward to hug them over the counter.

“Don’t do anything crazy,” Hermione said into his ear. Her bristly hair tickled. Ron wrapped his long arms around them both.

“Don’t worry,” Harry assured them both, squeezing them before letting go. “I just want to hang out at home for the next year.”

“Hit up Ginny,” Ron suggested. “Seriously, Harry, try to enjoy yourself. The war is over, and we’re the ones still alive. Maybe try to do some living.” He wrapped his arm around Hermione, and she tucked herself in tight to his neck. Brilliant freckles and nut-brown skin, his two best friends.

Harry blew them a kiss, and they popped into nothingness. The summer air rushed to fill the space they’d been, a hot gust brushing past Harry’s cheek like the touch of someone’s fingers.

He picked up the newspaper. Draco blinked, over and over, his face grainy and grey.


	2. Chapter 2

“So, as you can imagine, we’ll have to take a drop of your blood and perform a standard inspection of your wand.”

“My wand?”

“Standard, I assure you,” Legalwizard Shafiq said, nodding at him. Young, small, and solidly-built, she was incredibly professional: not only had she allowed Harry to introduce himself without fawning all over him, but she had yet to blink an eye about the strangeness of the circumstances. “Common in all familial claims, distant or not.”

“My — I switched wands recently,” he said carefully, thinking of the pieces of the Elder Wand, of Malfoy’s in his underwear drawer at Grimmauld. “Will that be a problem?”

“As long as you’re in possession of your wand and using it regularly, you’ll be fine,” she promised him. “The house will come to recognize you as its master over time. Now, then.”

She fanned out a row of pamphlets on her desk, pointing to each one with her quill. “Estate tax. Local Statue of Secrecy restrictions. A map of the property and grounds. It’s rather expansive, Mr. Potter, but I assure you that the gardening and security charms are self-maintaining. It’s not quite turnkey, but…” her professionalism fumbled for a the first time and she trailed off. He couldn’t help the thought that came: Bellatrix, Nagini, dungeons full of his friends.

“Have you seen it?” Harry asked, on impulse. He wasn’t sure if solicitors got to tour properties they were handing out to third-cousins, but she seemed to understand what she was saddling him with.

“I’m pureblood,” she confided. “Sacred twenty-eight, on my mom’s side. Of course my dad took her name, you know how that whole thing goes.”

“I… sure,” Harry offered, though he didn’t. “So you’ve gone to parties there?”

She nodded and stamped something he’d signed, passing her wand over the mark to seal it magically. “As a girl. It was gorgeous then, but I heard about the occupation...” she shrugged. “It can’t look great now. Apparently You-Know-Who kept a werewolf and Dementor army there.”

Not quite an army, but Harry understood how rumors travelled. “Not the ideal tenants, then?”

“War makes strange bedfellows,” she agreed.

Why didn’t Harry know more war idioms? He was truly starting to feel left out. He stood up to shake her hand. “Thanks, Legalwizard Shafiq.”

“Merlin’s beard, Mr. Potter, call me Zara,” she said, smiling.

“It’s Harry, then.” He shook her hand and left, shuffling through the packet of papers as he walked down the street. There was another newsstand: this one had Harry’s face, next to a photo of the Manor. Well, no way to hide it from Hermione and Ron, then. She was keeping up with the post-War fallout, sending overseas owls by albatross once a week with her thoughts. It would be a change to have her lecturing him again — he usually had to scan through two separate political diatribes before finding any news about the elder Grangers, or words from Ron. In the last month, they’d tracked her parents down, but feeding their memories back was slow going. Hermione had theories about Pensieves and spell reversals, and her determination was easy to sense on the page. Harry thought that even if the Grangers couldn’t remember everything, they wouldn’t be able to help but love their daughter and the man she’d chosen.

In the meantime he was alone, and Malfoy had never been found. Wizarding law usually wouldn’t presume him dead for a year and a day, but the Manor was deemed a safety risk, standing unclaimed. Harry had seen Malfoy’s face top the Prophet over and over, as the Ministry called emergency meetings, sent out Aurors, and overall did little to squash the rampant speculation. Gringotts claimed no one had been to the family vaults, but many thought Malfoy had fucked off with a fortune anyway. More thought he was dead. And now the Ministry had decided that, something having to be done, they’d declare Malfoy missing.

Which opened up his property to next-of-kin.

Wizarding homes weren’t passed over with a key. Malfoy couldn’t own it in absentia — his magical signature had to stay present in the home to control it, woven in the spells, offering claim of ownership. As the days ticked away, the Manor was presumed to be falling further away from wizarding control, and Harry had gotten the Floo call two days ago.

Legalwizard Shafiq — Zara — might have been a true professional, but Harry was still in a bit of a daze. The firm she worked for, Shelter & Stotkins, had clearly not cared whether Harry was ready or willing to receive a second ancestral home. They’d called him in, handed him the papers, and scheduled him for a wand-inspection-slash-bloodletting. Business as usual.

Harry Apparated to Grimmauld Place and walked the halls. He felt like a ghost in his own house most days, too emotionally strung out to change a single peel of moulding wallpaper. How the fuck was he supposed to take on another place? Harry Potter, the Boy Who Inherited Properties He Couldn’t Keep Up With?

“The Man,” he tried to tell his reflection, half-blurred by an unwashed window. “Who Has His Shit Together.”

It didn’t work. He still felt like a child, lost and adrift in legal papers and cursed elf-heads. And Draco was probably dead. He didn’t know why that made him feel the most unbalanced.

“Part of me feels like I should be out looking for him,” he tried to tell Ginny later. The other Weasleys had given them space outside, and he was pacing the lawn with her, looking for gnomes. The summer sun was up late, giving them a window of golden light and shadow that felt out of time.

Ginny snorted. There was dirt on her face, rubbed there from her wrist. He thought about wiping it away, about kissing her, but didn’t.

“Harry,” she said, as though he were very slow. “You just stopped saving the world, will you give it a rest?”

“Draco Malfoy is not the world,” Harry insisted. The world would be a whole lot different, if he were.

She shook her head. “Even more of a reason not to go looking for him. You got his house, isn’t that good enough? Like, I’ll take a house, if people are handing them out.”

“It’s not a house,” he insisted. A gnome broke free of Ginny, and escaped between Harry’s legs. She huffed at him. “It’s not! It’s a fucking torture chamber with about a thousand years of dark magic inside of it. You don’t want that.”

“Yeah, hopefully I’m done with all of that. As long I don’t, I don’t know, wind up in Voldie’s secret New York apartment,” she laughed. 

“New York?”

Ginny twisted her hands, looking caught out. “I— Dean got into Pratt.”

“Oh.” He didn’t know what Pratt was, but he wasn’t stupid. During the beat of silence that followed, Molly peeked out of the curtains and pulled them shut again. Ginny and Harry both rolled their eyes. “She knows?”

“She _knows_ , she doesn’t _accept_ ,” Ginny grumbled, but came close enough to touch his face. She did kiss him now, gently, and Harry brushed the dirt from her forehead as she stayed close, watching him. The touch of her lips was comforting, but so was the thought that she was leaving, making a choice without his having to torture himself about whether he wanted her. He’d thought he had.

“I love you, Ginny,” Harry sighed, though he didn’t know what that meant.

“I love you too,” she insisted, and gave his shoulders a shake. Her face was bright and clear and beautiful, her hair a wash of flame. “Listen to me. I’ve loved you my whole life and I always will. But we weren’t supposed to be that way. Only one person can have been possessed by the Dark Lord in a healthy relationship.”

“Is that in a book somewhere?” He could picture it in something Hermione would own. _Post-War Romance, A History._

“It fucking should be.” She kissed him again, and this time he felt the good-bye in it. “Ron and them, they might not get it. But you do, I think.”

“I get it,” he offered, and tried to smile. He thought he’d pulled it off, but Ginny’s face was sad.

“You will.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Harry, this is fucking stupid,” Ron said, even as he helped.

They were Levitating half-sealed boxes over to the fireplace, Floo standing ready. Hermione was fussing over a check-list Spellotaped to a second pile of boxes, these ones neatly labelled. They’d propped all the windows of the drawing room open, but Grimmauld was still muggy and hot from the July heat. Harry wasn’t going to miss it.

“It’s not that stupid,” Harry argued, mostly out of habit this time. Hermione and Ron had returned with the Grangers a couple weeks back, and had stayed with them for a week before spending another week with the Weasleys. They were finally settling in at Grimmauld, though, and Hermione’s last few boxes had been brought over that morning.

The morning Harry was moving out.

“Just stay here,” Ron continued, as though Harry hadn’t argued. “Mate. Just go over there to work on the place or whatever — or hire professionals, honestly — and sleep here. This is your real house, come on. ”

“This place knows me,” Harry said again, wearily. “The Manor doesn’t.” He’d barely been able to get through the front door, even after the bloodletting and the wand ceremony and a hundred more signatures. Its magic buffeted him gently back, not attacking, but not submitting either. Hermione and Zara had both, separately, recommend he spend more time there. But no one had thought he’d make a go of living in the abandoned Malfoy Manor.

“Harry’s right, he needs to go,” Hermione chimed in, looking up from her list. “A week should do it, though. And then he’ll be right back, Ron. Just in time for his birthday party.”

“But what about meals?” Ron asked, a little desperately now. “You can’t eat at the same table You-Know-Who—”

“I’m sure they have multiple dining rooms,” Harry said, tired of arguing. “‘Mione, help me here.”

“Well, I can’t speak to the dining rooms,” she said, finally putting her quill down. “I didn’t get the full tour.”

Ron and Harry glanced at each other. Hermione supported Harry’s going to the Manor, but she sure as hell wasn’t going with him. Not with MUDBLOOD carved in silver on her skin.

“Besides, Ron,” Hermione continued, in a much different voice, “You don’t want to be alone with me? We haven’t had a week to ourselves in…”

“ _Ever_ ,” Ron added quickly, his eyes lighting up in sudden realization.

“Stay out of my bedroom,” Harry said, for the record, though he didn’t much care where his friends banged, so long as he didn’t have to imagine it.

“No promises,” Hermione said with a sniff designed to wind him up. Ron grinned.

It was strange to step through the fireplace, Ron behind him, both carrying a battered cardboard box. The place felt like no time had passed, like Bellatrix was just around the corner. Harry shivered: who knew what was left in this haunted place?

“Yikes,” Ron said, which Harry thought was putting it mildly. “I don’t even want to leave you here. Are you sure they did scans? Made sure there isn’t, like, some were-Nagini skulking about?”

“Let’s check.”

They walked away from the grand fireplace, down a rich wood hallway filled with sleeping portraits. The house was huge and still around them. Everything looked expensive, from the rugs to the doorknobs to the stained glass windows, which showed warped views of the grounds through panels of green and blue. Harry jumped when he saw something go past the window — an albino peacock, plump and lush and utterly unconcerned that its owners were dead or missing.

They passed through the dining hall where Charity Burbage had died. They passed the patch of floor where Hermione had been marked. They passed the doors of a library, filled with books that seemed to pulse with bad intentions. But no crystal goblets had been left on the tables, no doors had been left half-opened. Whenever they had arrested Narcissa, they had come quietly, it seemed. As grim as the manor was, it was in better condition than Harry had expected. It was in better condition than Grimmauld, actually, and he felt a little guilty claiming the museum-like place to himself when Ron and Hermione would likely be spelling old Hippogriff shit off their sheets that night. 

The guilt disappeared when they got to the dungeons. Harry would rather clean a thousand bedrooms than be left with these grim reminders of the War. Each one had been scrubbed clean, which was somehow just as awful as finding something. All that remained was a heavy, horrible feeling.

Ron was biting his lip, running through some spells. He tapped each wall in turn, waiting until the orange light he was conjuring turned green. Finally he turned to Harry and shook his head.

“Well, everything’s fine, mate, no active Dark magic. I’d sage the place though. I’ll send some from mum’s garden, she harvests it at full moon.”

“Thanks,” Harry said, wondering suddenly if there was a television anywhere in the house. “I’ll come over for the Cannons game tomorrow?”

“Perfect.” Ron looked relieved to be excused. Harry didn’t blame him: he had a girlfriend to go back to, Molly’s leftovers, a place that was simply dirty instead of possibly evil. “Well, good luck.”

Harry nodded. When Ron left he Levitated the boxes upstairs. From the landing of the grand staircase, the layout of the house was pristine. Not a drop of blood. Not a speck of dirt. Upstairs was much the same: he put his things into the first bedroom he found, which was packed with gilded Florentine furniture that was so tacky it had to be unbearably expensive. It seemed like a guest room, though, and Harry wasn’t about to curl up in Lucius Malfoy’s spot.

He explored the upstairs afterward. For some reason he’d thought there would only be bedrooms up there, but there were other rooms as well — little studies, opulent restrooms and saunas and some kind of observatory. There was an owlery in a corner tower room, empty now, and a room that seemed like a sort of homespun Quidditch museum. Harry recognized Draco’s broom, with a jolt. He hadn’t ever thought he would recognize it, and there it was, displayed on the wall like a relic from someone long-dead.

 _He’s not dead_ , Harry reminded himself, although he didn’t know why. It wasn’t like he wanted Malfoy to be alive, he just… didn’t want him dead, either. Even if the rest of the world was happy to presume him gone, Harry felt vaguely like Draco would show up at any moment to kick him out, insulting his friends the whole way.

The master bedroom was rich and red, draperies dripping in black and gold. It was almost Gryffindor-like, save for the extravagance and malicious aura. Lucius’ snake cane was propped up in a corner, and seeing it, Harry’s throat felt like it was closing. He opened Narcissa’s cupboard on a whim: beautiful robes and woven gowns crowded against one another. Harry touched one, suddenly sad. He wouldn’t miss Narcissa, exactly, but the war had taken as many of the wrong people as it had taken the right ones.

He went to Draco’s room next. It was clearly Draco’s room — the second-biggest and the most modern, it was all pale wood and rich blues. It was surprisingly bright, actually, and Harry found himself drawn inside out of a genuine like for the surroundings. He’d never have guessed that Draco had a reading chair tucked into the window, a huge desk covered in schoolbooks he wouldn’t need anymore. There were additional Potions and Transfigurations books, one on Vanishing objects, proof of the task he’d been forced to complete for Voldemort piled up next to the evidence that he’d worked hard to compete with Hermione. He usually came in second to her, Harry remembered. He’d always assumed it had been from the most inherent magical knowledge, making Hermione’s studiousness all the more impressive. Now Harry thought maybe he’d been wrong — Ron’s family was just as old, and he hadn’t had nearly as many extra study materials near his bed.

The bed was a curtainless four-poster, four wooden posts carved into griffins that framed a surprisingly inviting pile of white-and-grey sheets. One of the griffins yawned and turned its head to look at Harry. He stroked its knotted head, and it blinked sleepily.

Apart from the books, there wasn’t much sign of a personality in Draco’s room. Harry lingered at a chest of drawers, touching each thing atop it: a vial of Sleekeazy’s Hair Potion, a bowl of bizarre candy that was mostly blood-flavoured lollipops and peppermint toads, and a potted plant with a little floating cloud hovering above it, raining slightly.

It didn’t feel like enough to be the remains of a whole person. Especially one who, for better or for worse, had loomed so large in Harry’s life.


	4. Chapter 4

Harry was a little nervous about looking into the pantry, assuming the Malfoys would have half a rack of Muggle waiting for their guests to feast on. He was surprised to see it open to a perfectly-stocked series of shelves, though: veg, meat, dairy, wine, even a chocolate torte, all sorted onto appropriate shelves and cushioned with individual temperature spells. It must be restocking magically. Lucky for him.

He took out an enormous pork shoulder, and another one popped up to replace it. He picked a tomato off a picture-perfect vine, and another one bloomed in its place. Harry had one bitter moment of thinking how much he could have used a pantry like this at the Dursleys, and then went to work.

The kitchen was enormous, vaulted and floored with tile that sucked the heat from his bare feet when he toed his shoes off. But it felt less intimidating when Harry started to fill it with cooking smells, onion and curry powder and mustard seed sweating together until he’d put together a half-decent vindaloo. He found a German wizarding beer that looked wildly expensive and opened like champagne, and carried everything to the front door on impulse.

He sat on the front steps of the manor, bowl nestled in his lap and bottle at his side. It was getting dark, but strange little lights were starting to dance along the garden, and statues and follies in the distance were beginning to glow as the sun disappeared. It was like some fanciful park ground, everything timed to turn on and off. He wondered if the lights had been going on and off, the pantry replacing old food, all without anyone there to oversee it. If the Manor had been left to fall down, could someone come back in a hundred years to its ruins, and still see lights coming on in the gardens at sundown?

It was beautiful, though. Without the people and the spells and the violence that had filled it, it was almost just… a house. A huge house, that was more like wandering alone through a closed-down museum, but it had been a home once, too. Harry tried to imagine a young Draco Malfoy running through the gardens, and was surprised to realize that he could picture it easily. Some tiny, imperious little boy, demanding the world without any idea that he’d barely live to see it.

Harry cleared his throat. He had to stop thinking such maudlin thoughts or he’d never survive the week. It was basically a week alone in a luxury hotel, keyed only to let him in — even if he couldn’t quite bring himself to treat the place with disrespect, it was important that he keep filling it with things like vindaloo instead of things like Unspeakables.

After dinner he went back to the library, looking for something to do. He found a wizarding phonograph and rifled through the ancient records stored underneath. It was mostly Mozart and goblin jazz, with one lone Celestina Warbeck hidden away, sending that same singing regret through Harry when he imagined Narcissa swaying to it.

Harry, tipsy now and still sipping beer from the bottle, lit all the candles and played You Charmed the Heart Right Out of Me on repeat. He closed his eyes, and between the music and the food and the lights, he no longer felt alone. Maybe he could do this. Maybe he could wake the house back up, make it listen to him. Live here, even. There was a savage beauty to it that he couldn’t help but appreciate, as if Hogwarts had an evil twin.

“No wonder Voldemort liked it here,” he said out loud. They’d shared a soul and a mind once — hell, Tom Riddle had even stolen away his girlfriend for a year. And if they could have so many big things in common, maybe liking the Manor could be one more little one.

It took two spells to warm the Florentine room he’d put his things in, but the beer helped him fall asleep right away.

He dreamed of Draco.

“What are you doing here?” Draco asked in the dream, but he was floating, wet white hair all around his face.

“Why aren’t you dead?” Harry asked instead, although he couldn’t be sure Draco wasn’t, really. He was ghost-pale, suspended in some brackish water that seemed everywhere, weightless.

“I’m not?” Dream-Draco seemed surprised. He looked down at himself, chin tucking down, and Harry realized he was naked. His body was blue-tinged alabaster, the hair on it shockingly dark against his skin. His veins showed starkly under his skin, and a path of scars was spread over his chest, glowing dimly underneath the water. His hands and penis were floating upward, nearly breaking the surface, and Harry looked away, filled with a half-woken shame that surprised him.

“You might be,” he admitted, and Draco looked grimly back at him. His eyes were so, so grey.


	5. Chapter 5

A few days later was his birthday. Harry had stocked Grimmauld proper with Carlsberg and Ogden’s, invited everyone he knew. Luna showed up three hours early to help set up without being asked, and Harry didn’t notice until later that she’d put out a lopsided cake with a lightning bolt iced onto it. Dean and Ginny came together, Dean a little abashed but Ginny stopping by to give Harry a kiss on the cheek before running to save Dean from Ron. The Patil twins came, Parvati clutching Lavender’s hand. Lavender was newly scarred, but she wasn’t the only one who’d changed in appearance. They all had some new scars, and Padma had shaved her head, and Lee Jordan showed up with golden tattoos that covered him from wrist to throat.

They were his friends, but different. It was the same, only not at all. And yet Harry felt a fierce rush of joy to see them, all alive, all surviving. It was incredible to be together still, drinking and shouting and dancing to Sirius’ stash of old punk albums, wands stored safely away until it was time to keep the ice from melting in their cocktails.

Of course, no one could avoid the War forever. Seamus got too drunk and started to cry a little, toasting to Colin, and then everyone had to make a toast. Harry stood swaying in the doorway, buffered on one side by Hermione, listening to the toasts and the cheers as they got rowdier and rowdier with each name on the too-long list.

Ron tipped his glass and said, tightly, “Fred.” Hermione said “Tonks and Remus.” Dean, thoughtfully, said “Snape,” and almost no-one booed. “Dumbledore,” Ginny added, and Transfigured everyone’s drinks into a Sherbet Lemondrop for that sip.

“Malfoy,” Harry said, when it was his turn.

Everyone stared, for a beat. And then Ron shrugged. “You heard the birthday boy; Malfoy!”

And they drank.

Harry’s throat burned as the sweet taste of lemons turned back into firewhiskey in his mouth. He didn’t know what had made him say it, except that in the grand scheme of things, Draco had been as young as them. It just didn’t seem right not to acknowledge someone who had disappeared right under everyone’s nose and gone forever unburied.

He wondered for a moment if he should hold a funeral, then shook himself. It was his _birthday_. What was he even thinking about?

So instead he did shots with Ron and danced with Hermione and then watched with the others, giggling and shoving, as a bewildered Muggle deliveryman followed their instructions to leave three large pizzas on the sidewalk outside the invisible Grimmauld Place. 

He smoked a gross Dwarvish cigar and judged a Charms contest, where Padma and Luna raced Levitating footstools around the room. He held Neville’s growing hair back when he got sick in the garden, moaning all the while about the rarity of the plants he was puking on. He even made out with Dean and Ginny, just a little, but let them go upstairs without him.

Everyone trooped into the bedrooms eventually — Neville and Luna, Parvati and Lav, Seamus and MacMillan and Finch-Fletchly. The rules had relaxed a bit, Harry thought, watching people disappear to sleep and love each other in twos and threes. It was nice, everyone having someone. Maybe it was a little sad to be the only one alone, but he had his friends, and they had each other.

Ron wasn’t speaking much by the end, but he bobbed in place, remaining upright at the kitchen table. Harry and Hermione and Hannah Abbott were the only ones still talking, everyone else having crept off or gone home or passed out right in the sitting room. Grimmauld was nowhere near as finished and polished as the Malfoy Manor, but it felt a thousand times homier, packed with friends as it was now.

Hermione and Hannah were chatting in low voices at the kitchen table while Harry made tea. He Levitated the tray back and waited for everyone to prepare their mugs before he took Hermione’s hand under the table. She squeezed tight and leaned against Ron, who mumbled something about piskies.

“Did you get any gifts, Harry?” Hannah asked, blowing on her tea and looking at him. He never would have predicted that a Hufflepuff would hold her liquor so well, but then, she had fought fiercely with Dumbledore’s Army after her mother’s death. Maybe he didn’t know her as well as he’d thought. Maybe everyone else had been busy growing up while he’d been camping and bargaining his soul.

He told her about Mrs. Weasley’s new attempt at summer knittings, the light sweater wrapped in cooling charms. Hermione dug out Hagrid’s rock cakes for Hannah to try as well, laughing at the look on her face. “Dip it in your tea,” she advised, letting hers sink to the bottom of her mug to soak.

They climbed up on the enormous sofa between some sleeping Gryffindors to watch an old Monty Python film, Ron falling asleep the second he hit a pillow. Hannah stayed up for another half-hour, yawning through Camelot and the quest for the Holy Grail, finally falling asleep at the Trojan Rabbit. 

“How was your birthday?” Hermione asked, curling back onto Harry’s shoulder. He put his arm around her and nestled his hip against Ron’s sleeping body, enjoying the feeling of being firmly weighed down by his best friends. “Did you get everything you wanted?”

“I have everything I need,” he said muzzily. Her hair smelled amazing, like clementines and shea butter. She pinched him.

“That’s not what I meant,” she insisted. Only Hermione could corner him, alone together in a house full of people, finding the moment of silence in an all-night rager. Only she could gift him books and ask if his heart’s desire had been fulfilled.

“I’m as happy as I can be right now, I think,” he assured her, knowing she’d understand that a hundred percent was still impossible. “But I love you for asking.”

“I love you, too,” she said, because it was obvious. “I just worry about sending you back to rattle around in that place alone. Good thing it’s only a few more days.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, although a part of him was starting to become attached to the Manor, in some perverse way. With his hangover looming a few hours away, he was almost looking forward to returning to its luxuriant, empty silence.

The next morning was a riot of pancakes and Pepperup potion, a small army of hungover friends pouring coffees and righting spilled bottles. Harry clapped shoulders and received cheek kisses and one by one, everyone went back to their jobs and their lives.

He helped straighten up and went back to what he had: the Manor.

Harry Apparated to the front gate, feeling like a walk after a night of abusing his poor body. From the iron arcs of the entrance, the place was vast and beautiful, twinkling like a jewelry box set up on a hill. 

Or was it twinkling because the lights were on?

Harry frowned and quickened his pace, walking too fast now to appreciate the verdant grounds. A few lamps were definitely on upstairs — unless it was a trick of the light. He didn’t know the house well enough to swear either way.

He tried the door, but got a little resistance from the wards for the first time. Fair enough: he was there to prove himself to them, anyway. “This is my house,” he told the doorknob, and it gave a creak. He waggled it again more firmly, pushing some magic into his wrist as he shoved.

It opened reluctantly. Harry raced upstairs, wand at the ready. His heart was thumping against his throat, the adrenaline rush of months past racing through his blood.

But the lights were off. Harry peered into each room upstairs, banging the doors shut to flush out any intruders. Nothing.

“I’m getting paranoid,” he mumbled to himself, rubbing his eyes. Draco’s room was last, and he sat on the bed to let his heart calm down. It was comfortable, almost warm in this tomb of a place. He was tempted to lay down and fall asleep right there… and because he was exhausted, and because it was his house, he did.


	6. Chapter 6

Harry slept in Draco’s room after that. It just felt friendlier, more lived-in somehow, less cramped and formal then the other one. He only had a couple more nights, anyway, so he thought it didn’t matter much.

He’d developed a routine. He woke with first light, a habit ingrained from those months on the run. He’d take a broom off the wall and go flying first, covering another corner of the grounds each morning. Everywhere was something new to discover: a garden filled with bees, buzzing around eternally-blooming flowers of impossible colors. A tidy little labyrinth, whose path from the air showed the shape of an M in the middle, its other paths shifting daily. A small ruins, though whether they were real or some sort of modern folly, he couldn’t be sure. But it had a stone bench and quiet moss and a cool black pond in the center of its little courtyard, and Harry liked it either way.

He liked all of it, really. He was surprised, but maybe he shouldn’t have been. He’d never spent time alone like this, save a few weeks at the Leaky Cauldron the year he’d blown up his Aunt Marge. He liked setting his own hours, eating his own meals, hearing his own thoughts. He liked the Manor, now that he’d been there long enough to think of it as having two distinct identities. It was a benign, beautiful place, and it was a place where horrible things had happened. He thought maybe horrible things happened at all kinds of places, and it wasn’t the fault of the stone and the grass.

After he’d worked up a sweat flying, he’d pop back in through the owlery window and freshen up. The house still wouldn’t take a warming spell properly, so he’d run the shower as hot as he could. From there he’d wander the house casting little spells so the house would recognize his magic, usually just turning lights on and off as he explored. Each day had lead to its own adventure: genealogy books that contained photos of Harry’s great-great-grandparents at a party, a singing teakettle that was eager to tell Harry about a king it had served, a burn mark in the wood that resisted any but the most Muggle of repair attempts. The portraits hadn’t woken up yet, but Harry felt like he and the Manor were getting to know each other, maybe trust each other. It made him understand the Malfoys a little better, too, like he understood more of what they felt they had been defending, at least on a personal level.

He was straightening up from the floor, where he’d been laying on his belly for an hour, eating a sandwich and reading the spells woven into the rug, when he saw something weird. A — a _wall_ had moved? Maybe?

The problem with magic was that it could be hard to know what you were looking at. He popped up and wandered over, brushing his hands off on his pants. The panelled wall outside the kitchen looked as though it had twitched, or flexed, or something. It triggered a memory of the Room of Requirement, maybe, and he ran his hand along the wall. It seemed normal. He tapped it: normal.

And then there was nothing for it but to walk the entire home, tapping walls with his wand along the way. He considered calling Ron over, but he couldn’t be sure that he’d really seen anything. “Revelio,” he called, over and over. “Aparecium. Finite incantatem.”

Nothing. Although the house wasn’t exactly cooperating. He could feel a resistance in the air, like the magic in the house had been polite so far, but wasn’t about to let his spells reach their full power now. Light started reflecting into his face from the windows, and dust flew into his nose in the owlery, though he knew it had been clean that morning. Determined to force a reaction, Harry took a deep breath and then sprang around a corner to the hallway, wand drawn to cast a Revelio again, battle-quick.

The rug reared up to trip him, solidly, on his face.

Back on his belly, Harry sighed. Okay. So maybe the house wasn’t accepting him as its owner as easily as he had thought. He’d been living out of his boxes, anticipating that he’d be back at Grimmauld with Ron and Hermione in a matter of days. But if he left before mastering Malfoy Manor there was a real chance he could be locked out by its wards for good.

“‘Mione!” he was shouting into the Floo a few minutes later. “Oi!”

“What, mate?” It was Ron, popping up into Harry’s line of vision half-dressed. “Is something wrong?”

“No, I mean, maybe. I just need to ask her something, want to come round?”

“You could come here,” Ron suggested warily, instead. He was still clutching his trousers at the button, holding them upright. Harry had just started to take in the fact that Ron was very underdressed when Hermione interjected, shouting from somewhere he couldn’t see.

“Not until I’m dressed!” Ron looked guilty, then pleased, then embarrassed, all at once.

“Ugh,” Harry said, with feeling. “You lot will have twins by the time I’m out of here.”

“What do you mean?” Ron asked trying for innocent, just as Hermione’s face hovered into view, robes in place but her hair even bushier than usual.

“You’ll be back in a day, Harry,” she argued, rolling her eyes at him. “You’re really assuming a lot of my ovulation cycle if you think-”

“Merlin,” Ron muttered, just as Harry said “ _Ugh_.”

“No, I think I’m stuck,” he continued, looking at Hermione now as Ron went fumbling off for a shirt. “The house isn’t listening to me like I thought it was. It’s almost getting worse.”

“Oh, that’s not good at all,” she said, biting her lip. “Okay, well, I’ll go look it up. But I think you really should stay, then. I _am_ sorry.”

“That’s rotten luck, mate,” Ron said, coming back into view. “I guess I could pop round, then, as you’re staying.”

“If you’ve ever a moment,” Harry agreed, although he kept his voice light. He didn’t want to put any pressure on them coming — even just on Ron, if it would make Hermione feel like she ought to go, too.

“Do you want some more stuff, then?” Ron looked to Hermione, who nodded and disappeared again. Harry was starting to feel like he was watching some sort of puppet show. 

“Whatever you can dig up, I guess.”

Ron looked over his shoulder, and apparently seeing that Hermione was gone, turned back to Harry and lowered his voice. “Are you going mad over there? I would. Luna was saying you need to check for hinkypunks, she reckons they might try to kill you on the grounds sometime.”

“Oh, that’s reassuring, thanks,” Harry nodded. He twisted round — it had sounded like a window had closed somewhere upstairs. Maybe he’d left one open.

“Take this,” Hermione said, reappearing. She was holding a bundle of his things to her chest, and Harry was distracted as soon as he spotted the contents of her armload.

“Did you go through my underwear drawer?” he asked, affronted.

“Yes, shut up,” Hermione said absentmindedly, and Ron shot Harry an apologetic look before helping her pile the things neatly. She’d brought a change of clothes, some new socks and underwear, a coat that had been left draped over his chair. And there was a box, that for months had lived under the worn-out old drawers the Dursleys used to give him, containing Draco Malfoy’s wand. “I think you should try to use it. It might help to link you to the Malfoy magic that the Manor’s been running on. You’re its master, so I think that should help.” She cast a quick spell over everything and shoved it all into the fire before he could respond. Harry dragged everything out quickly, still not used to seeing things burning without trying to snatch them from the flames.

“Thanks,” he said, a little dubious. He was afraid to open the box, like it would be waking up a piece of the dead to use Draco’s wand. But if he started doubting Hermione now, he’d have to shift his entire worldview.

He thanked Ron and Hermione, releasing them back to whatever unthinkable things they’d been up to. God knew they deserved it, even if Harry wasn’t getting laid.

“Can’t fuck ghosts,” he murmured to himself, fiddling with the box. It popped open, and the wand dropped onto the floor, rolling until it was stopped by the cast-iron, House Elf-sized fireplace tools. It was thin and long, made of hawthorn. He thought maybe it had unicorn hair or something, which seemed a little strange, thinking of Draco as an innocent. He was maybe more innocent than Harry had thought as a kid, though. Or at least a little less culpable.

He picked it up, twirling it idly as he remembered the slain unicorn in the Forbidden Forest, Draco’s abject terror. How had such a scared kid ended up with Dumbledore at the wrong end of his wand? _This_ wand, Harry realized, stroking up with his thumb.

The house went crazy.

Harry shot up to his feet, startled as a dozen windows banged open, slamming against the walls and shattering glass. The phonograph in the other room came on, blaring the Vivaldi Harry had been listening to last night. He took a jogging step toward the noise, then remembered the wand, slicing it frantically to stop the sound. It stilled at once, the windows waggling almost apologetically back into place. Another slash of the wand through the air fixed all the windows. It was working _incredibly_ , as though it were a better vehicle for Harry’s power than his own wand. It must have been working in harmony with the house.

“Right as usual,” he muttered, making a mental note to tell Hermione. Later. He wasn’t about to interrupt again.


	7. Chapter 7

The wand helped, Harry thought, but in weird ways. For one thing the food supply had changed, shifting to a collection of fanciful sweets, French breads, and exotic fruits that Harry wasn’t going to argue with, although he wondered at their appearance. When he used the wand to freshen up the warming spells that had been failing hourly, they sank into every cushion and comforter with ferocity, making his butt sweat every time he sat down until he could adjust the temperature.

It also started rearranging the house. He lost a bathroom, and then a cupboard. He wasn’t sure about the sitting room, as there seemed to be four or five, but one day he went upstairs and had lost the master bedroom. He thought maybe the house was making room for him — it had, after all, provided a microwave one morning, although it seemed dubiously made, and had buttons with gilded cauldrons and other mysterious settings. One filled the kitchen with a fragrant smoke, one Transfigured anything inside into popcorn, and one didn’t seem to do anything - until he tasted the meal he’d made and discovered that it tasted exactly like a Big Mac.

He waited a few days to be sure the rooms wouldn’t come back, but finally he seemed to be living in a pared-down, liveable version of the Manor. He felt like he was rattling around in it less aimlessly, at least. Strangely, the house didn’t do anything about the dungeons or the dining room where he’d had so many horrible memories. He started to think he should do something about it, if this was his place now.

The first thing he did was send away for supplies. It took two days for everything to be delivered, and another day for him to find where the postman had left his packages. He finally found them at the back edge of the lawn, a good twenty-minute hike from the house but apparently as close as the wards would let Muggles get. He shrunk everything down, dried the dew off, and set to work.

He’d shoved all the tables and chairs to one side, losing track of hours and days in the sweat-inducing labor. It felt good to use his muscles, to scrape priceless furniture across priceless floors. He scuffed the wood in one place and kicked a rug over it, not bothering with a Mending charm.

The curtains came down with a good yank, and he shook them out over the floor, walking across them as he Charmed them all white. When they were back up they made the newly-emptied room feel more modern, and Harry took his shirt off to keep working. A few hours later, he’d Transfigured all the ornate bergères into squashy sofas and armchairs, changed the walls from damask to dark grey, and turned the curtains into one enormous, stiff piece of fabric. The projector didn’t want to work, unsurprisingly, but he fed it some magic until it kicked into life, spitting distorted images onto the curtain until he used a sticking spell to keep it high on the wall.

He’d ordered movies too, every film he’d never been able to see as a kid now a sleek VHS, and when he began building the cheap bookshelf he’d gotten to store them in, the dining room table fell to pieces behind him. Harry was a little confused until the wood started twitching, clearly wanting to be used in the place of fibreboard. After that it seemed like the Manor knew what he wanted, and by dinnertime Harry was curled up with a bowl of penne alla vodka, watching The Goonies.

He fell asleep on the couch, and woke up to Dirty Dancing. Sleepily, he was pleased that the Manor had started playing films for him, and dragged himself to bed, only waking once to overhear the ambient cheers of The Karate Kid. 

After that the Manor seemed more in tune with Harry’s lifestyle, and didn’t trip him anymore. It let Harry tug back portrait coverings that had been stuck, giving each painting a chance to move again. None did, but the Manor didn’t cover them back up, either.

Next he let the peacocks in the house — there were three, and they seemed pleased to be inside, shitting everywhere and curling up to sleep in odd places. Harry was sure they had fanciful names like Veni, Vidi, and Vici, but he called them Snow and Pearl and Betty White for their coloring. Betty immediately started sleeping in Draco’s bed with him, and Harry was grateful to the Manor for clearing their messes.

“I think it likes me now,” he was telling Ron, sitting cross-legged in front of the Floo with Pearl in his lap. “It stopped hiding my left socks.”

“That’s something,” Ron said dubiously. He was laying on his back at Grimmauld, facing Harry upside-down through the flames. “Reckon you can leave yet? We’re going down the pub with everyone.”

“Maybe.” Harry worried his lip, thinking. “I went out to the edge of the property the other day. I’ll try it out and let you know. There’s something I’ve been wanting to do outside anyway.”

“Alright, be careful,” Ron advised unhelpfully, and stood to go. “And if you come, put a shirt on. Gin’ll get the wrong idea.”

Harry looked down at his chest, surprised. He’d been so comfortable the last day or so, he’d never bothered to dress properly. He threw a sweater on now, though, and went out to the grounds, trailed by peacocks.

He’d had a dig through the outbuildings and discovered a shed that operated like the Malfoy larder, supplied with endless magical fertilizers and seed packets that would have sent Professor Sprout into fits. He suspected that some had been Snape’s, or some past Malfoy potioneers. It was everything you could find in Diagon Alley, all preserved in perfect order. When he pulled out a few packets, they snapped back into place, popping into his hand and back onto the shelf in a satisfying piece of self-duplicating magic. Harry, delighted, did it three more times.

Finally, arms stacked with goods, Harry left the damp air of the shed. Enormous topiaries dwarfed the walk up the main drive, manicured English lawn perfectly green underneath. Around the front entrance were more small shrubs, each trimmed into a fussy M. Harry dumped his armload and set to work.

He ripped the shrubs down entirely, hacking away each curlicued serif with no little satisfaction. Fuck that M, fuck everything it had stood for. Instead he dug up the dirt with a spade and his hands, ripping seed bags open and dumping them into the ground. He felt a little manic and a whole lot pleased, although the temptation to take his clothes off again was strong. Surely Hermione would worry about him now, hair all in a tumble, soil on his sweater, surrounded by strips of bushes and cut by their thorns.

It was worth it. In place of the monogrammed, contained shrubbery he’d planted flowers. Lilies on one side. Narcissus on the other.


	8. Chapter 8

He had the nightmare that night.

Harry had gone to bed early, exhausted by all the magic and sweat and catharsis. Somehow in the fixing of things, he’d forgotten about what was broken — who had just died, how _he_ had just died. 

It all came back.

It felt like hours that he was locked in terror, screaming, crying, Vodemort’s eyes, his mother’s screams, Dumbledore’s hand. Ron walking away, Hagrid weeping, Fred on the ground. He felt locked in, like it would never end, like he would live forever in a soul-suckingly horrible moment, like the mouths of Dementors, like the feeling of Avada Kedavra invading his body.

He thought he woke up, at one point, but couldn’t be sure — the room was true dark, and he had a strange feeling like music was playing.

 _“This was my Mother’s favorite song,”_ he heard, a hand on his forehead, before he was sucked back into that fucking cupboard, that freezing lake, that horrible cave. 

The next morning he sat with a mug of tea and a blanket and stared out over the grounds. It was a good place to go crazy, he thought. Betty the peacock slept at his feet while the sun rose.

He called Luna next. “I think I’m going insane,” he told her, as soon as she popped her head into the fireplace.

“That’s an insensitive thing to say about yourself,” she said mildly, and dropped some Floo Powder before stepping through the fire.

Harry backed up to let her in, surprised. “You didn’t have to come over.” If Hermione had good reason not to come back, certainly Luna had even more of one. But she stepped forward, unconcerned, ignoring Harry now to wander over to the window. She sniffed the air, then went around a corner. Harry, bemused, trailed after her.

He followed her to the new home theater, relaxing a little when her face lit up. “This is brilliant,” she said, and began hunting through his films. He’d expected her to have more of a reaction, but maybe he should have known not to expect anything predictable from her.

They raided the wine closet and watched Toy Story, socked feet tangled in one squashy chair, and Luna cried. Then she wanted to make popcorn garlands, and somehow there was popcorn in the cabinet.

“The house likes you,” Luna said, hours later, when they had decorated the hallway with garlands and eaten a quick stir-fry. “It’s giving you popcorn, and it didn’t move this room back after you changed things.”

Harry nodded. “I think I could leave soon. It even played music when I was, uh, upset last night,” he offered. 

She nodded. “Could be the house.”

“It has to be,” he said, laughing a little. “Otherwise I really am losing it.”

“It’s okay to lose it sometimes,” she assured him. “And it’s okay to hide sometimes.”

“Do you think I’m hiding?” he asked, surprised, but she just shrugged at him in her Luna way before departing, a bottle of antique wine in each hand.

He fell asleep in front of the screen again, waking to dimmed lights and low voices.

 _The portraits are awake_ he thought muzzily, and didn’t stir. If they heard him they might quiet down again, and he hadn’t heard them speak yet. It was the same kind of portrait murmuring that he’d heard so many times at Hogwarts, almost comforting to hear again. There weren’t any that he remembered in this room, but there was one outside the doorway, and he could hear two voices going back and forth out there now.

“...tradition,” one was saying, which seemed right for a Malfoy portrait.

“It’s a question of ownership,” the other voice agreed, and there was a hum of agreement from the first voice. Harry knew one of the portrait subjects was an old Malfoy wandmaker, but wasn’t sure who else had come to visit with him.”Father said…”

 _Sounds like a Malfoy, all right,_ Harry thought, smiling briefly before surrendering back to sleep.

He dreamt again. Malfoy, peacocks, caves and cool water. It wasn’t a nightmare this time, but he felt weird, like there was something he’d forgotten somewhere. This time Harry was naked, but it was alright, in the dream it was alright and he wasn’t afraid of anything anymore. Voldemort was dead and he was alive and Draco was… was…

When he woke up again, both wands were missing.  



	9. Chapter 9

“I’m worried about you,” Hermione argued from the fireplace, as she spelled a basket of laundry into neat folded piles. “You should be alright now, just try to come out. It would do you some good. I’m sure the Ministry could sort you back out, if anything happens.”

“That’s a big risk to take,” Harry pointed out. He was pacing, unwilling to sit down when he’d been called away from the garden. There was a koi pond he’d become fascinated with, going back every day to trim away more of the long grasses that had nearly hidden it. The koi were enormous and fat, silver and vibrant oranges, slippery blacks and shining scales. He thought they were hundreds of years old, maybe, and almost certainly magic. The pond seemed small for them, so he’d been rooting around looking for a shovel or some helpful spellbook in the gardening shed. Of course, this being the Malfoy Manor, the shed was more of an enormous converted stables. He’d only emerged from it, dusty and spiderweb-covered, when Hermione had sent her Patronus through the Floo. “I’m fine.”

“You’re faffing about,” she countered, gesturing at him with her wand. He had to stop himself from jumping back, out of sheer instinct. “You’ve muck on your nose, your hair looks a mess—”

There was a snort. Harry whirled round on the portrait behind him, which stayed quiet.

“And I bet you don’t even know what day it is,” Hermione finished, jabbing at the air again.

“Could you not point your wand at me so I don’t kill you by accident?” he griped, finally giving in and sitting down. And even though he’d taken down the Dark Lord, Hermione rolled her eyes.

“That’s a ‘no,’ then, is it? Well, you’ll come round to the Burrow tonight then. We’ll pick you up first, so you’ve no excuse. You know you can’t leave me the only non-Weasley there.“

Harry smiled, despite himself. “Alright then. Come by, we’ll visit Molly together.”

“That’s more like it,” she admonished, and tossed a lump of something from her pile into the flames. Harry snatched it out, dusting off his nearly-clean Weasley sweater. “Give that a Scourgify and we’ll see you about five.”

“Cheers, Hermione.” He signed off and stared at the sweater in his hands for a moment before dropping it to go back outside.

“Good afternoon,” he said to a portrait on the way out. “I know what day it is.” It didn’t say anything back, but he saw it blink at him as he walked away.

Harry spent the rest of the afternoon working on the pond, but he barely deepened it, with no wand to focus his magical effort, and he gave up in a fit of annoyance a few hours later. He stormed back into the house, annoyed at the pond and the weird way the magic here only half-accepted him, the way he was being forced into things by his friends and the weird feeling of not _wanting_ to leave the Manor, no matter how the house frustrated him.

He also knew he hadn’t misplaced his wand. And he knew no one else had entered the house.

After a few hours he’d stewed himself into a right strop. Besides, he was sweating again, a sticky level of grime forming on top of his already-cooled sweat. He started stripping down in the middle of the doorway, sick of feeling gross and trapped and prodded at, kicking his trainers into the decorative panels of rich wood in the hallway. He slammed the door shut, delighting in the alarming noise the glass inserts made from the impact.

He yanked his trousers and boxers down as one, half-tripping over them as he stumbled forward a little, reaching for his shirt even as he caught himself. He yanked that off next, pulling his glasses off his face with the violent motion. They hit the floor somewhere in front of him, but he could hear better than see where. “Fuck,” he said, kicking blindly, somehow more irritated than before now. “Fuck!” He dropped down to hunt for the glasses, searching and naked and entirely furious.

There was a bang — as though someone had dropped something. 

Harry jerked up. “Accio glasses,” he whispered, willing them into his hands and shoving them onto his face before looking around. Fuck. Here he was, no pants, no wand, caught throwing a tantrum in front of… who? Whoever had stolen the wand in the first place? One portrait dozed, another pretended not to notice his nudity. There was no one else there.

Another thump sounded, and Harry whirled on it. It sounded like something in the wall, and he relaxed slightly, letting his shoulders down a bit and breathing out. It was probably just vermin, sneaking in through the worn-down maintenance spells from the home’s months of sitting empty. There had been mice sometimes, in his cupboard growing up. A place like this probably had hundreds.

A little embarrassed now, but glad no one had caught his strip show-slash-tantrum, Harry gathered up his clothes and went up to take a bath.

Ron and Hermione came exactly on time, wearing matching Weasley sweaters despite the heat. Harry, cleaner now and slightly calmer, was waiting in the kitchen.

“It looks a lot different,” Hermione admitted cautiously, peering around in a much more fearful way than Luna had. Ron had his arm firmly around her, but he tipped his head at Harry, inviting him into a three-way hug. He squeezed them both and let go. “Did you make the downstairs smaller?”

“Upstairs, too,” he assured them. “It’s much easier now.”

“Hmm.” Hermione worried her lip, looking around. “It doesn’t feel like your magic. Still, you’ve done a lot with it, I’m sure the spells will recognize you when you come back tonight.”

“Or you could come back to Grimmauld,” Ron put in, cheerfully. “We had Gin and Dean over last night, it was a right laugh. She made this whiskey lemonade that makes you glow in the dark, you have to try it next time.”

“Next time,” he promised. Lied. It was strange, how he kind of felt like Grimmauld was Ron and Hermione’s house now. How the Manor was his. He didn’t want to leave, not even for that night, really. As they stood ready to go, cloaks in their hands, he realized how much he would lose if the Manor didn’t re-admit him. Would the house crumble completely? Who would feed the peacocks? The koi? Who _had_ been feeding them, come to that? The house was still hiding its mysteries, and Harry didn’t want to risk missing the chance to discover them. “What happens if I can’t get back in, anyway?”

Hermione hesitated. Hary tensed up: the answer wasn’t good. “Well, of course the aurors might be able to get you in. They did before! And you still have the best legal claim, of course, it’s just… sometimes…”

“Sometimes what?” Harry asked, and Ron shot a look at Hermione, then him.

“Sometimes the House Unplots itself,” Ron supplied reluctantly. “Goes missing. Whole Wizarding colonies have done it before, you know. Roanoke, Atlantis, even Brigadoon had a variation of it for a while. Think of it like Grimmauld to the Muggles. But no worries, mate, right? You gave it a try, you can’t be locked up in here forever. How many places do you even need?”

Cold anger filled Harry’s throat, and he felt the air in the house shift a little around him, cooling. “You just want the Manor to disappear?”

“Of course not,” Hermione answered, exasperation showing around the edges of her voice. “But you can’t lock yourself away forever, people need to know you’re okay. No one’s seen you since your birthday. And this house is still evil, no matter what good you’ve done to it.”

“Houses can’t be evil,” Harry spat, feeling his anger escaping, the monster in his chest unwinding from sleep. “And I’m _not_ okay. You’re the ones forcing me out of my comfort zone, so I’ll thank you not to show up and insult it, like I should just- just throw it away! I’m not going to let.” And he stopped.

Because he’d been about to say, “I’m not going to let Draco’s ghost disappear.”

It was Draco’s ghost, it had to be. The presence he felt in the house, the voice he’d heard. The moving rooms, the missing wand. Draco was still here, in some invisible way, and Harry wasn’t going to let the last remains of him disappear forever. He wanted to protect him, whatever was left.

“Okay, weirdo,” Ron said, after a minute of silence. “It can be your comfort zone. Let’s just go get dinner, Mom says she’s making trifle.”

“Not tonight,” Harry bit off. “Have fun.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Harry, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you liked it here so much. But you still can’t stay forever!”

“We go every week, he can come next week,” Ron said to her, lowering his voice as though Harry couldn’t hear.

“Why can’t he come now? We’ve told your mum he’s coming!” Harry rolled his eyes, letting them squabble. Ron was pretty good at derailing Hermione when she got too pushy. He’d agree to next week, and they’d go, and Harry would feel guilty but at least Ron wouldn’t give him shit, they just had to talk for another moment and then —

One of the peacocks shrieked. It split the air like a real scream for an instant, and all three of their heads snapped up at once.

“Harry, you let the birds _inside_?” Hermione had gone pale. He didn’t blame her. Hearing a scream here didn’t do much to support his “it’s not evil” theory.

Harry shrugged. Ron seemed torn between concern and laughter, but the tense moment seemed to have passed. Hermione sagged a little, then pressed a quick kiss against Harry’s cheek. “You know we love you,” she grumbled, as Ron took her arm to Apparate away.

“I know,” he said, giving a hug to Ron, as well. “Maybe you can bring me some of that trifle.”

“Fat chance,” Ron said gleefully. “You know I don’t share sweets.”

The peacock cried out again, closer now, followed by an echoing crash.

“What was that?” Hermione began to turn. Behind her, a tapestry moved.

“Nothing,” Harry said quickly, grasping her wrist to keep her from looking. He kept his eyes focused elsewhere, deliberately ignoring the flash of blond that had sent a shock through his stomach. “Just the birds. I’ll come next week. I promise.”

“Okay,” she said, reluctant, and gave him another hug. “Okay, bye then. If this is about having pets, Harry, you can always bring the birds to the garden at Grimmauld, you know.”

“I’ll keep it in mind goodbye,” he managed to say, waving like an idiot until they took the cue and popped into nothingness. “ _Fuck_.”

Now that he was alone, he set off to investigate. First the tapestry. He approached it carefully, pulling one corner as carefully as if it were a monster book of monsters. Nothing there. He checked the cupboards; nothing but stashes of cauldrons, jumbled sets of fireplace tools, a leather case filled with Quaffles whose spells had worn down.

He ripped the next tapestry down, losing concern for the house. He tapped the walls all the way through the first floor, lighting up dark corners and pulling book after book down from the shelves in the library. Surely one of them would open some hatch, or at least trigger a haunting.

“Draco?” Harry went upstairs, calling for his former enemy as if he was a lost cat. He’d finally accepted that he was being haunted, and now his ghost had disappeared.

He was leaving a trail behind him now, pillows tossed to the floor, chairs knocked over as he searched under desks. Somewhere, there had to be some proof _somewhere_... Peeves had left paths of destruction across the school, but now it was only Harry making a mess.

Well, he may as well keep going.

Harry searched every room in the Manor, taking care to pound the walls where he thought rooms had been swallowed. Was the ghost in there? Was it trapped? “Draco!”

Finally he’d searched the Manor to the top tower, the sun going down around him from the uppermost window. He paused for a minute, trying to breathe deeply and take it in. The manicured grounds stretched on into forest, paths leading to little structures, the flowers he’d planted already in magical bloom. Snow or Betty White was by the tiny koi pond, drinking with graceful dips of their long, elegant neck. In the distance, clouds were gathering, collecting the sunset’s colors in smudges and strips. He took another breath, willing himself to relax, to go make some tea and turn in, to stop worrying about ghost and stop going insane and stop _obsessing_ , again, about Draco Malfoy.

Instead he went all the way downstairs and flooded the dungeons.

With every surge of the magic that poured out of him, loose and sloppy with no wand but endless emotion, he remembered. He remembered the Muggle bodies that had bent and broken, about the diary of Tom Riddle stashed between family photo albums upstairs. He thought of Luna down there, not crying, but humming, and about her laying on the couch, stringing popcorn garlands. He thought about Ollivander and finally Draco again, Draco trying to sleep as Voldemort sat below. He’d grown to pity Malfoy in the last few years, but now he thought maybe he respected him too. Harry had thought he’d known everything about growing up in a house of horrors. What was the love of a parent, if it lead you into darkness? What was the love of a parent, if they died and left you to fend for yourself amidst every evil in the fucking world?

And the water poured and poured. Harry sobbed for breath, falling a little against the stone stairwell as the floods finally reached his knees. He felt drained suddenly, too exhausted to stop the upward-swelling flow. It tickled his toes, his calves. He sat down on the step and waited for it to take him.

“Am I going crazy?” he whispered to himself, jeans soaking through, waters rushing like the blood in his ears.

And Draco, finally, answered “no.”


	10. Chapter 10

They sat facing each other in the hallway. 

Draco looked sick — wan and pale and wilting, like some exotic plant that had been kept indoors and away from the sun. But Harry supposed ghosts looked like that.

No one had spoken for a few minutes. The water had stopped at the top stair, and Draco had watched as Harry turned back to the top of the cold, black waters. He closed his eyes, and the floors beneath their feet flickered. He’d turned to Draco, who had handed him his wand. Not Draco’s, Harry’s. Harry just took it without speaking, turned back to his spell.

He turned the floors into thick glass, dropped balls of illumination into the the dark water underneath them. He’d let the pent-up magic in his wand unfold for a moment, before screwing up his face and bringing the koi inside. They popped up in the waters, one after another like spots of blooming color, streaking quickly and then settling, more sedately, into a rhythm. 

Draco had watched without speaking, not reacting to the floors or the fishes’ sudden appearance. The entire first floor looked down on them now. Harry had looked between his feet at the eerie, beautiful lights, the ancient fish, and sat down right on the floor.

He was exhausted. Nothing like Draco looked — Draco looked how Harry ought to have expected, what with being dead. Harry looked him over, noting the bruises under his eyes, the strange sluggishness of his movement. It was like he was sick more than dead, really. Maybe a sickness had killed him.

“Was it a sickness?” he asked, testing his theory since he didn’t know where else to start. All bets were off when it came to the way he normally talked to Malfoy. They were past that somehow. He felt like they were in the middle of a conversation that he’d just realized they were having. 

Draco cleared his throat. Harry thought about Summoning him a glass of water, but didn’t want to be rude if he couldn’t drink it. Did ghosts like water? He seemed to remember the Bloody Baron sailing through Hagrid’s whiskey one night, when no one was looking. Did that count?

“A sickness?”

His voice seemed croaky and thin, but relief poured through Harry suddenly, reviving him a little with something buttery-warm. “You’ve been here the whole time, haven’t you? Since you died.”

“Since I—” Draco’s ghost narrowed his eyes at Harry in a way that was so _Draco_ , he almost laughed. “I’m not dead, you _enormous_ idiot.”

Harry frowned. “Are you sure? Maybe being a ghost takes some getting used to.”

“Merlin and Morgana both,” Draco said faintly. “You truly are so fucking stupid.”

“Hey,” Harry said, confused and beginning to be embarrassed, but trying for stern. “Come off it. You disappeared and the house went to me. That means you’re dead.”

“What, according to the Ministry?” Draco snorted, sounding much more like his normal self. “They’re stupider than you are.”

“That’s… a good point.” Harry scooted closer, the carpet catching under his ass and coming with him. “So you’re not dead.”

“Not dead.” Draco raised his hand in a faux-swear.

“You were.. In the walls?”

“Well.” Draco shrugged, and a look Harry had only seen on him a few glorious times before bloomed pink. It was embarrassment.

“You were in the _walls_?” He thought about his naked tantrum and covered his eyes, pressing the palms of his hands into his eyelids until spots appeared. Then he pulled them away. “Wait, did you seal off half the rooms?”

“Just what I required,” Draco sniffed. Harry rolled his eyes.

“It was half the house! I thought it was getting used to me.”

“It is.” Draco rapped on the floor that bordered the runner they sat on. A fish came up to his knuckles, hopefully brushing along the underside of the glass.

“We should do little feeding stations,” Harry mused, peering over the side of the rug.

“I was wrong, you have gone mad,” Draco told him, and stood up. “I’m going to bed.”

“Wh- You can’t just _go to bed_ ,” Harry said, baffled. “If you’re alive we have to tell someone.”

“There’s no one to tell,” Draco snarled, throwing his hands up. He still had his wand in one hand, and Harry stood up, cautious. “You fucking loon. Just leave before the house decides it’s yours now, and don’t tell anyone I’m here.”

“I’m not leaving.” Harry argued, rolling his eyes. “You may be bound to the Manor by blood but it’s mine legally now. If I leave, you’ll get Unplotted, and you’ll have to haunt a house in some magic black hole somewhere.”

“For the _last time_ , I am not a ghost!” Draco threw his wand down and crossed the distance between them, reaching out his hand — 

_His body was blue-tinged alabaster, the hair on it shockingly dark against his skin. His veins showed starkly under his veins, and a path of scars was spread over his chest, glowing dimly underneath the water. His hands and penis were floating upward, nearly breaking the surface, and Harry looked away, filled with a half-woken shame that surprised him._

Harry stepped back, startled. Draco rolled his eyes and stepped in again, more carefully this time. “Here.” He stuck out his hand, and after a moment, Harry took it.

Draco’s hands were clammy and cool. They shook, in an echo of Quidditch games and _the wrong sort_ and Harry let his hand fall back to the side.

“Now do you believe me?” Draco asked, quiet.

_His eyes were so, so grey._


	11. Chapter 11

Draco disappeared for about five hours, apparently content to return back to his walled-off apartment, unconcerned with the fact of Harry in his house, altering everything.

Harry couldn’t seem to relax, though. He was in disbelief, still, and a part of him felt near-frozen in shock. The touch of Draco’s hand had done something to him, something that felt heavy and permanent.

They had a secret now, for the least of things. And it was probably illegal in some way — either Harry was squatting, or Draco was. He longed to call Ron and Hermione, but he wasn’t convinced they wouldn’t just say he was seeing things. He was inclined to believe he’d finally cracked, himself, but then there was the handshake, and the solid feeling of everything having shifted.

Draco emerged around midnight, when Harry was half-asleep in front of _Back to the Future_. His presence woke Harry up, and he propped himself back up without saying anything. Eventually Draco perched on the other arm of the couch, fidgeting with his knee. He was wearing his old clothes, but the knees looked worn, the black trousers less than black. 

“So he’s a werewolf with a Time-Turner?” he asked finally. “And he’s flirting with his own mother instead of undoing his Bite?”

Harry tried not to laugh. After all, he’d been behind on childhood films, as well, hence the movie theater he’d made — to fulfill that childhood fantasy built on peeking into Dudley’s room at cartoons just out of reach. Plus purebloods were weirdly ignorant about Muggle things — and you didn’t get much more pureblooded than the Malfoys. Still, he had to bite his cheek before he could answer.

“That was a different movie. He was a teen wolf in the other one, in this one he’s just got a friend with a time machine. It’s the car though, not a necklace.”

“Mm.” Draco squinted. “The mum thing is still weird.”

“Says someone so inbred they’ve never seen _Back to the Future_ ,” Harry sniped, and Draco plucked a pillow off the couch to toss at his face.

“My ancestors’ marriages were carefully curated to prevent inbreeding, you berk. You really know nothing about being pureblood, for someone with strong enough lineage for the house to recognize. Look at what you did to the formal dining room.” He didn’t sound mad, though. He almost sounded impressed.

Underneath their feet, fish flit back and forth, chasing each other from the coffee table to the squashy armchair. “Do you want to watch something else?” Harry asked. He was curious, suddenly, about what Draco would pick.

Draco shook his head, though. He started reaching for another pillow, and Harry stood up, leaving the room so it only got him in the back.

Harry went into the kitchen, carefully not watching Draco until he could sense the other boy behind him. He opened the fridge, the cabinet, the pantry, setting things out one by one.

Draco watched, leaning against the counter without saying a word, just out of arm’s reach. He just watched as Harry started chopping, grating, peeling, and eventually sat on the countertop. Harry didn’t look at him directly, afraid of scaring Draco away before he’d had a proper meal. For someone like Harry, cooking came naturally, but he suspected the blond had been scavenging just cold, uncooked foods – bread and honey and apples, bits of jerky and assorted nuts. He looked like he’d been starving, half the time, as well. And if anyone knew anything about keeping quiet and hungry in closed-off rooms, it was Harry.

“Why’d you take both wands?” Harry asked, to distract Draco as much as himself. He’d squeezed a lemon over some chopped chicken and veg, following with oregano, pepper, salt, garlic, and olive oil. He wasn’t sure what vitamins you gave someone who had been hiding in a walled-off room, so he’d mixed red onion, some peppers, and a courgette in. There was feta in the fridge: he set it aside to add once everything was done roasting. Everything went on one pan and into the oven at the same temperature: he’d kept it easy, just in case Draco was paying attention.

“Panicked,” Draco shrugged, not meeting his eyes. “I grabbed them in the dark, then didn’t know how to put yours back. I didn’t know you could do wandless magic.”

“You can’t?” Harry glanced at him, but Draco was rubbing at something on the counter beside him, furiously avoiding his gaze. He understood why: months of living like a Muggle, like a rat in the wall, like a prisoner. Not even magic to keep warm, to feed himself, to wash his clothes. Draco seemed like he’d done alright, but it was hard to know how much he’d struggled to be this bedraggled version of his normal, impeccable self.

Struck by some weird inspiration, Harry turned back to the pantry and began stacking baking supplies on the counter: flour, sugar, baking soda. The ingredients covered the tiles, until he was placing things right beside Draco’s lean thigh. Eggs. Sea salt. Jam, mixed-berry.

“It was my birthday a week ago,” he said next, cracking an egg into a bowl. If it was weird for Draco to see Harry more comfortable in his kitchen than he was, he didn’t say anything. Instead he snorted. 

“Your birthday was more than a week ago. Granger was right, you need to get out more.”

“You need to stop creeping around listening to people’s conversations,” he answered, without any heat.

More than anything, Draco reminded him of a cat. There was a bit of Crookshanks about him, in the way he pretended to ignore Harry until something caught his interest. It was there in the twitch of his foot like the twitch of a tail, there in the way he pushed an egg off the counter when Harry got too absorbed in baking.

“Stop that, you’re like a naughty child,” Harry said, swishing the egg clean and depositing his wand back on the counter.

“And you’re a homewrecking room stealer. Literally a homewrecker. The wood from those floors you Vanished came from an extinct forest, you know.”

“Well the famous Harry Potter laid that glass down, so start bragging about that instead.” He opened the jar of jam, ignoring Draco’s indignant noise.

“Are you using jar jam for a Victoria sponge? You heathen.”

“You don’t have to eat it,” Harry said mildly. Draco watched him set the cakes to baking, being good until there was an empty bowl to steal and stick his fingers in. “Put the kettle on, won’t you?” To his surprise, Draco actually licked his fingers clean and hopped down to obey.

It was strange to stand together, cooking and preparing, rustling up dinner and dessert and some hot drinks. But it was stranger still to carry it to the couch, sitting together in the mess of overstuffed pillows. Harry had gotten rid of the dining room table, and they piled the trunk he’d dragged in with plates and mugs.

Harry put _The Princess Bride_ on and they ate in silence. He glanced over every so often, gauging Draco’s reaction to the movie. He wanted to talk more, to ask a hundred questions, but he was afraid of sending Draco back into the walls. He’d just come back from the dead — questions could wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uhhh yeah I guess this is just gonna have 103983484 tiny chapters sorry


	12. Chapter 12

After dinner Draco watched Harry clear up, not offering to help, which was hardly surprising. He disappeared for a few minutes, emerging with a bottle of ancient-looking whisky that hadn’t been with the alcohol that Harry had seen before.

“Where’d this come from? Are there secret hidey holes still?” he asked, taking the bottle to peer at the faded label. Draco actually laughed at him.

“Of course there are.” Draco lifted the bottle to his pointy nose and inhaled deeply, taking an equally deep swig before handing it over. He shuddered, watching Harry take his own swallow — it was like wood smoke and honey, and it burned a stripe down his throat. He nodded, and Harry took another gulp before holding it back out. “God, it’s good to be out in the open. I was starting to believe I really was dead.”

Harry paused, still holding the bottle aloft. He wasn’t sure if Draco had meant to say that out loud. It seemed like he had been holding it in, only able to wait for the bottle to be open and not for them to be properly drunk. 

“Death looks like the Hogwarts Express,” he put in, trying for helpful. Draco just blinked at him.”Is that why you came out now? Because you were going mad?”

“We both were.” Draco lifted the botte and his chin as one, gesturing toward the front door. When he started walking, Harry followed, telling himself it was because of the bottle. “Come on then.”

Together they creaked down the hall and stepped outside the grand doors, leaving them ajar, light following them onto the wide marble porch. Draco reached out with one hand and snagged the narcissus as they passed, the flowers tumbling through his curled fingers and before springing free.

They picked their way down the main path, packed gravel crunching below them, tinged with a blue iridescence. Pixies added further light, flitting from bush to bush in search of spiderwebs for weaving. Beyond them, the topiaries creaked slightly in the dark as the swans swayed and the horses shifted mid-rest. Everything was so ostentatiously _magical_ here, in a way even Hogwarts was too practical to be. Hogwarts functioned as a school, where the Manor functioned as a seat of wealth and blooded power. Harry felt right there, more in tune with that strange magical part of himself. No one could grow up here without knowing they were a wizard - unlike Little Whinging.

“Why didn’t you take your room?” Harry broke the silence on purpose. Draco seemed uncharacteristically predisposed toward silence now, and he’d been hogging the bottle, as well. 

“You were sleeping in there, you potion-huffing simpleton. I didn’t want you to find me.”

“Ah. RIght.” Draco finally passed the bottle back, and their hands brushed. It felt weird, that shock of skin, but at least it confirmed Draco was alive. “Are we going anywhere?”

“Shut up, you’ll scare them.” They were approaching the wood now, the house disappearing behind them as the path in front of them began winding through trees. The main drive cut through them, disappearing up to the main gates, and Draco cut left, entering the nearest copse through a smaller, less well-defined path. The gravel faded into dirt, and the trees swallowed them before they’d walked twenty yards. Harry bit his lip and tried not to think of the Forbidden Forest, but he couldn’t help stopping as the light behind them disappeared, reluctant to follow the path into blackness.

“Where are we going? I saw the pixies.”

Draco turned around and furrowed his brow at Harry, who had fallen several paces behind. “Pixies,” he repeated. “Pixies are boring. That’s like saying I would show you the horklumps. Pixies, Potter, honestly. Come on.”

“Er, I’m good,” Harry offered, trying to sound unconcerned. “Plenty good here.”

“Scared, Potter?” Draco grinned, and Harry gave up.

“You wish.” They kept walking. Draco lit the tip of his wand, wordlessly lifting it to brighten the space around them both.

Finally Draco crouched down, leaving his wand floating vertically like a candle, beaming light. Harry kneeled beside him — or tried, but Draco shoved him off-balance at the last second, sending him wavering sideways before he caught himself. “Oi!”

“You’ll squash them,” Draco hissed, and reached out to the ground where Harry had been about to kneel. There was nothing there, just a mass of leaves and vines, and then one stalk of green detached itself and climbed onto his pale fingers.

Harry put the bottle down — very carefully. “Is that a Bowtruckle?”

“Well spotted, maybe your giant friend managed to teach you _something_ ,” Draco replied, but the insult was delivered automatically and without heat, he was peering at his knuckles, focused on the Bowtruckle.

“Are there more?” Harry asked, instead of rising to the bait, and searched the ground around him. All the grass just looked like grass.

“Of course there are, this is an alder grove.” Draco gestured to the trees as if they meant something. “Wand wood. Really good for non-verbal spells.”

“Did Ollivander tell you that when you had him locked up?”

“Hilarious.” Draco’s eyes finally met Harry’s again — they were cool with anger, in that very Malfoy way that always reminded Harry of white fire. Draco was better at it than Lucius. Lucius’ rage was usually hotter, but Draco had just as much of his mother’s ice. The result was so cold it burned, and Harry couldn’t help the smug feeling that rose up at having caused it. It was the most life that Draco had shown since his appearance.

Still, he didn’t want to disturb their reluctant truce to the point of breaking, so he redoubled his efforts to find another bowtruckle. Harry ran his fingers through the undergrowth, watching his chewed-on, much-scarred fingers spread out through leaf after tumbling leaf. After a moment, something moved at the touch of his hand, and he found himself lifting another strange creature to his face. The bowtruckle looked just like plant life, its camouflage better than any butterfly. A curious little face peered up at Harry. He grinned, delighted.

They found a safe patch of dirt to sit in and got comfortable, passing the bottle back and forth as they let the bowtruckles run across their hands. Harry had a pretty good game going with his original one and a couple more who had showed up: he’d skim his lit wand across the ground, and they’d race after it, climbing over each other and criss-crossing the wand.

Before he knew it, it was full dark. The sky was a bruised purple, and he could only see stars if he looked up directly. Next to him Malfoy was so milk-white that he almost glowed in the dark, standing out against the black of the trees. It was the most most time outside Draco had gotten in who knew how long, Harry realized, and it was the first time he’d been in a forest since dying. It was nice just to sit, smelling the loam and the wet earth, no Snatchers, no giant spiders, no Voldemort. Just a surprisingly amiable quiet, and the crrk-crrk-crrk of the bowtruckles and a deep, heavy drunkenness that blended it all together into one blur of Draco’s white hair and the tickle of tiny feet and a strange sort of peace.


	13. Chapter 13

“Now that you know I’m here,” Draco said after a very hungover breakfast toast-and-tea, which Harry had assembled, groaning, as Draco watched from the counter again, silent and grey-faced, “we need to make some changes.”

“Oh, fancy giving half the house back?” Harry crunched into the last corner of toast, getting butter on his fingers and some crumbs on the counter. He looked for a tea towel, and then Vanished it instead.

“It’s my house, and I’ll wall the whole thing off if I want to,” Draco said sternly, and Harry made a show of rolling his eyes. He’d woken up feeling leaden and vaguely as though he was forgetting something. Maybe he needed more tea.

“What then?” he dared ask, swallowing a sigh when Draco’s eyes went bright and beady. “We could do a slide into the dungeons, like a swimming pool thing.”

“God, no, what a horrible concept. Can you imagine the old magic that would soak into the water? Death soup, I imagine. Besides, if the day ever comes where I see your Weasley in just trunks and freckles, I’ll Avada myself.”

“No you won’t,” Harry challenged, slamming down the kettle he’d been refilling. Water splashed his face and arms as they glared at each other, and Draco’s mouth twitched just a bit. 

Harry sighed. One hangover and he was throwing Draco’s will to live back at him like a bad thing. “Maybe we could use some Pepper-Up,” he added reluctantly. “Do you have any?”

“I was getting to that.” Draco lifted his wand and directed a slow stream of water back into the kettle, avoiding Harry’s eyes now as he spoke. “I have a few errands you could run. At Diagon, you know. Basic potions ingredients and such. And then we can fix up the house some more, if you’d like. We have to compromise on the koi, they don’t need the entire floor. The sitting room would suffice. We can Charm the walls to match, I know a good one. And if you’d like to make some more changes, there’s a gargoyle out back that’s been hassling me since childhood. I can’t unStick it myself but surely your freakish magical ability should extend to stonework.”

Harry paused. It sounded like there was a compliment on there somewhere, albeit unintentionally. “So not only can I stay now, you need my help?”

“No one said that,” Draco said cagily, looking behind him as though Harry was talking to some other blond git. “I was merely suggesting, since you’re so determined not to leave my home, that you could get us something to fix this buggering headache before the peacocks start going off.”

“Oh,” Harry remembered, delight growing at the chance to annoy Malfoy, “you mean Snow, Pearl, and Betty White?”

“Salazar, no.” Draco’s nose wrinkled, and something satisfying spiked in Harry’s belly. “Their names are Valkoinen, Garuda, and Spalva. What on earth is a Betty White?”

“What the hell is a Spalva? And more to the point, if I leave this house to run your errands, you and this house will probably vanish into the ether.”

“If it’s ether or this headache, I’ll risk it,” Draco said carelessly, waving one hand. 

“Hmm.” Harry studied him. He certainly wasn’t trustworthy, but if Malfoy believed the house would be fine, Harry was inclined to believe him. No one knew the manor better. But if he left and Draco somehow altered the wards... 

“Give me a key,” he said suddenly, struck by inspiration. He stuck his hand out, wiggling his fingers at Draco.

“A key?”

“Yeah, otherwise you’ll just lock me out of here. How do I know I won’t just go run all your errands and be locked out afterward?”

“That would be a clever thought, if this house had a key. You were so close.” Draco drew his shoulders in and hopped off the counter, brushing around Harry for the kettle. The steam had just begun working up a whistling whisper, and he stopped it with his wand. Draco stared at the wand in his hand for a moment, then handed it to Harry. _Oh._ He felt kind of stupid, and a little like he wanted to give it back.

Instead he said “Okay.” 

“Okay,” Draco agreed, sounding cautious but determined. “I’ll make a list.”

It was strange to trust and be trusted by Draco Malfoy, but it was even stranger to be out at Diagon Alley again, among real people. He was swarmed almost immediately upon entering, but luckily Florian Fortescue was standing outside his shop, and put his sonorous voice to Harry’s advantage, scolding the first few people who tried to jump up and shake Harry’s hand. After that he was going to Disillusion himself, but Dean and Padma were emerging from Flourish & Blott’s, and he let them talk him into some hair of the dog.

After a quick pint, he walked the pair down to Gringotts as they finished regaling him with stories of the parties he’d missed. Apparently Alicia Spinnet was pregnant, and Seamus had started seeing a Muggle, and Ginny had been accepted into a writing apprenticeship in Brooklyn. The last one threw him. It seemed like something he should have heard from Ginny, should have known she was considering, but it _had_ been a while since he’d seen his friends. Hermione was right to have worried, he realized, as she always was. He’d sealed himself off with Draco Malfoy and summer was ending and everyone was going to go on to the next thing. Everyone _had_ a next thing.

He didn’t have much to share in response, but it was nice to catch up. He promised to Floo soon before they parted ways, doubling back to the apothecary that Malfoy had mentioned.

Draco had handed him a piece of paper and encouraged him to pass it on to the proprietor, but Harry reached for it as he went in, wanting to make sure that there wasn’t anything evil or put there to embarrass him. He touched Draco’s wand in his robe pocket first, and felt a surprising spark of shame. Malfoy had trusted him, hadn’t he?

So he handed the paper over without unfolding it, and left with a heavy bag that tinkled and clattered as he walked. He’d been right not to worry: the potions were labeled, and they were fairly dull. There was a hangover cure, a general Pepper-Up, and some coagulating and anti-scarring serums. Most guilt-inducing of all were the ones Draco had been trying to hide. There was a weight gain supplement made with sea-dragon blubber, the legal maximum of Dreamless Sleep, and an ingestible dilution of dandelion root that had had a Cheering Charm placed inside.

The shopkeeper had returned the list too, and when Harry scanned it now he saw one more thing on the bottom.

Newspapers.

He walked into the newsagents reluctantly. A small man looked up and smiled at the doors’ jingle, warm eyes the color of mud fixing on Harry from between a mop of grey hair and the most wrinkled little body Harry had ever seen outside of a raisin. “Ah, Mr. Potter,” he said, voice as small yet warm as the rest of him, “what can I do for the man who sells most of my papers?”

“I need—” Harry managed to cut himself off before he said _newspapers._ “Er, just a summary of the last few months, really. Whatever you have.”

The proprietor nodded, looking a little sad. Harry drew himself up and tried to look like someone who hadn’t buried their head out of trauma. But the man said nothing, only fetching down more and more papers out of little cubbies, flipping one out of each and tying them together in mid-air with a ribbon that grew to fit the stack.

“The propaganda stops in mid-May,” he said, marking the date with a red-inked quill. “It will be obvious in the _Prophet_ , of course, but it’s a little murkier in the _Quibbler_ editions, which are always a bit incomprehensible. Funeral listings on the back. I included a special edition about the rebuilding of Hogwarts, although I’m sure you’re up to date.”

“Thanks,” Harry said, picking up the stack and wishing he felt like reading them. “And the coverage about the Malfoys?”

“Hmm.” The shopkeeper looked thoughtful, but shrugged reluctantly as he met Harry at the cash register. “Not much in any of the papers, to be honest, past the bodies being discovered and that short series about the boy going missing.”

“What do you think happened to him?” Harry asked as casually as he could, his heart thumping into his ribs as he counted out his galleons.

“Oh, he’s dead,” the man said, sounding certain. “Foolish to think everyone will leave an easy-to-find body behind, isn’t it? Probably got fed to You-Know-Who’s snake or something.”

“Probably,” Harry said weakly. “Thanks.”

The bell jingled behind him again on the way out, but this time it unsettled him. The world was cruel, he knew that, but it did truly seem like no one cared about Malfoy being alive. Except him — only no, did Harry actually _care_? He was certainly the one dealing with it.

In his arms, the stack of newspapers twitched with moving photos. Harry’s own face stared up from the top, and he shoved them all into his bag so fast that he saw his black-and-white doppleganger wrinkle.

TIme for some non-Malfoy time, he decided, and Apparated to Grimmauld Place.


	14. Chapter 14

Harry walked into Grimmauld and knew something was wrong. The wards Lupin and Molly had set up so long ago pinged to announce his arrival, but no one popped up to greet him, and no one was making any noise on the first floor. It wasn’t a good kind of silence. By now he’d learned the difference.

Immediately Harry tensed, stale adrenaline picking up where it had left off in his body. A million possibilities sped through his mind as he went up the stairs, pulling his wand out without taking his eyes off what was above him as he climbed. He passed a book on the floor, and then another. A hole in the wall he hadn’t seen before.

“Hermione?” It could be nothing. But it could be anything. A curse. Some uncaptured Death Eater… apart from the one he’d left at home. “Ron?”

Two flights up he heard the water. Part of him sagged with relief and a little embarrassment - he’d just caught them in the bath, of course he had - but it was still hard to shake his awful feeling. He would just check in, he told himself. Knock and say he’d been by and offer to come back later.

But when he reached the flight with the bathroom, he could tell from down the hall that he wasn’t interrupting anything like the giggly bubbles he had assumed. Ron and Hermione were in the tub, alright, and together. But they hadn’t shut the door or even taken their clothes off. They were holding each other, clothes soaked through, like one had climbed in after the other in whatever explosion Harry had missed.

“Guys?” He made it to the door, feeling a little uneasy at interjecting himself. But Ron looked up, eyes red, and opened his arms. Hermione watched as he climbed in, shifting herself so he could sit between them in the giant claw-footed tub. Water sloshed out onto the floor behind him, and he could feel the warmth of it soaking through his robes, then his sweater, then his shirt and jeans. The three of them sunk into each other in the way they always had, like when they were eleven years old and huddled together underneath the Invisibility Cloak. Hermione looked like she’d been crying, too, and Ron’s knuckles were raw.

Ron sighed and leaned his head against Harry’s chest, though Harry was shorter than the both of them. He met Hermione’s eyes over Ron’s messy red hair. _What happened?_ he mouthed at her.

 _George_ , she mouthed, and drew a line across her throat. _He’s okay._

“Christ,” Harry said softly, squeezing Ron a little tighter.

They sat in the water until it went cold.

Later they packed Ron’s things so he could go to the Burrow for a couple of days, and they dropped him off so Harry could hug a silent Molly. George had told the doctors at St. Mungo’s that he was only testing new joke potions, but he’d finished a dozen bottles and they’d found him in Fred’s sweater, and Arthur had called all the kids home to support him.

“I just don’t understand how someone could try to kill themselves,” Hermione confessed, as she and Harry tidied up that evening. They’d cleaned the bathroom and patched the wall that Ron had taken his pain out on. Apparently the books weren’t a part of the drama Harry had missed - as the only one of them who had made up her mind to positively go back to Hogwarts for another year, Hermione was merely beginning her two-month slow-burning crisis of which books to pack.

She had pushed them all to one side now, though, and was stress-laundering more of Ron’s things in case he needed them sent. Harry hadn’t reminded her that Ron still had most of his possessions at the Burrow, recognizing her need to keep busy, and had merely found Hermione’s mobile to order in some Chinese. 

“Especially knowing - knowing, mind you, because of Fred - what it would do to Molly,” She shook her curls: they sprang back into indignant coils.

Harry nodded, remembering the awful sadness in Molly’s eyes. She already had the look of a mother whose child was gone, lately, and he’d been heartbroken to see how fresh that look was today. “I think Fred is why he did it, though. To be with him. I can’t say I don’t empathize with him.”

“I mean, sympathize, yes…” Hermione slowed folding, then stopped, putting down Ron’s Cannons jersey to give him her full attention. “But empathize? Harry, have you had any thoughts about death?” It was dark now, and they hadn’t put enough lights on past Ron and Hermione’s bedroom, so the halls were dark and the windows were dark and the lonely amber light of the room made Harry feel as though they were cocooned with their secrets. 

So he told her the truth, though he hadn’t realized it was the truth until right then. “Of course I’ve thought about death. I died. I’ve been thinking a lot about it. I don’t… I don’t think I want to go back there, though, not yet. Don’t worry.”

She squinted at him, then nodded. “Okay. And you’re right, we don’t know what it’s like to be or lose a twin. I just hope he doesn’t do anything like that again. It’s good that they’re circling the wagons, it will help remind him of all the brothers he does have.”

“And sister,” Harry said absently. He got up to cast a Lumos, turning on the porch light so the delivery man would have a chance at delivering to their address. They would think they were dropping the bag at an abandoned house, but Harry was willing to take that risk for his eggrolls.

“And sister,” Hermione agreed. “Their going-away dinner at the Burrow is in three weeks, you know.”

“I’ll be there,” he promised. “I came out today, didn’t I?”

“So you did.” Hermione sent all of Ron’s things flying back into his drawers and Levitated his suitcase onto the dresser to await further clothes-sending. Then she dipped into her bedside table and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

“ _Hermione_ ,” Harry said, shocked.

“Dean left them here!” she defended herself, shoving him over on the windowseat where he’d been watching out for food, “he thinks they’re artsy or some shit. Anyway, open the window.”

“After all we’ve been through, this is the day you finally crack,” Harry grumbled, and popped the window open. Cool air climbed in, bringing sounds of the street with it.

Hermione lifted a smoke to her mouth and leaned forward: Harry lit the tip with a wordless spell.

She took a drag, watching him again, and then began coughing. Harry rolled his eyes and plucked the cigarette out of her hand, Summoning a glass and filling it with water. “I told you.”

“It’s been a rough day,” she grumbled, but then grinned and elbowed him, and he tickled her, and then he nearly burnt her with the cigarette, and then the phone nearly slid out the window, and they both ended up slightly jostled but a little more pleased.

“Excuse me?” someone called from downstairs, sounding confused. “Did anybody order from Min Jiang?”

They rescued their food from the poor deliveryman — who looked very surprised to see them pop out of the “abandoned” house at Grimmauld — and got into Ron and Hermione’s bed to eat it.

“I put a film screen in the Manor,” Harry told her, gesturing at the wall in front of the bed with his chopsticks. “We could be watching something right now.”

“ _Friends_ ,” Hermione sighed. “I miss _Friends_. Maybe I can come over and watch it.”

“Mmm.” Harry’s blood chilled when he remembered Malfoy. Fuck, it had been hours and hours, and he’d gotten entirely distracted. Malfoy probably thought that Harry had abandoned him again, and wandless once more. He had to get back. But… “I should stay with you tonight, though.”

“No, no.” Hermione waggled a carton at him. “I’ll just sleep for twelve hours, and then tomorrow I have an appointment with Professor Vector. I owled her to ask if it was too late to change my Arithmancer’s Thesis from last year if I were to retake the class, because I have a lot of new ideas after what we did with the Horcruxes, and I think if I were to - Don’t look at me like that, I wasn’t going to _tell_ her about them! I can keep my mouth shut, you know. I haven’t asked why you’ve been using Draco Malfoy’s wand all day, have I?”

“I-” Harry looked down. Next to his thigh on the bed was Malfoy’s wand. He must have been using it all day. “Okay, I know. Well, I hope she has some good ideas for you. And I just, um. The wand…”

“Helps you commune with the house’s magic? Makes perfect sense, Harry, I was just proving a point. Anyway, about her ideas—”

He left Hermione an hour later. She was yawning as he Apparated away, having tired herself out with her favorite distraction from life’s pains — learning. Harry was tired himself, but the moment he cracked back into the Manor’s foyer, guilt and anxiety spiked into him like a shot of espresso.

“Malfoy?”

But now this house was silent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry that this chapter isn't fun! I wanted to show how Harry isn't the only one dealing with tragedy and loss, and the different ways people are reacting and how that shapes them in the months after the war. It's my way of indicating why and how Harry is able to disappear right now: everyone else is putting themselves back together, as well, and not always successfully.


	15. Chapter 15

“Malfoy!”

Harry ripped through the house like a silver bullet. He kept seeing Molly’s face, Ron’s wet hair, Malfoy’s blue hands in the water.

“MALFOY!”

He banged through the sitting room, the kitchens, the downstairs bathroom. No one answered him, and he as he started up the stairs, he was filled with a horrible sense of deja vu. It had been a couple months now since one day had brought so much stomach-clenching panic.

Upstairs looked untouched, as though Draco had disappeared again, back into that uncertain space where Harry had thought him dead. Harry’s breath wasn’t coming out right. It felt strangled in his chest by a tightness that hurt.

“Glad you could join us,” he finally heard Draco say, furious, from their — Draco’s — bedroom. 

“Us who?” Harry rounded the door to find Draco sitting at the desk. His broom was on the desk in front of him, surrounded by the brushes and polishes of a full sportsman’s set. The air smelled oily and rich, pungent in a way that never failed to make Harry’s mouth water. Draco’s hair was pushed back, the fine blond strands a tangled swoop. It put Harry strongly in mind of a pony’s fetlock, and he bit back a smile that was mostly relief. 

“Don’t smile at me, it’s a manner of speech. Of course you wouldn’t know that. Did you even have any education before Hogwarts, or did Dumbledore have to teach you to wash yourself?”

Harry groaned and sat down on the bed, setting the bag of papers and potions beside him. His hair was still wet. “For fuck’s sake. I was worried about you, you prick.”

“Oh, _you_ were worried? I thought I was locked in my tomb by the world’s most feted hero, and you thought I didn’t trot out fast enough when master came home.” Draco dipped a rag in the varnish, a little more violently than necessary.

Harry bit back his instinctive retort. It had occurred to him, somewhere around when Draco’s voice had hitched on “tomb,” that this was what panic looked like on him. Maybe it always had been — maybe the worse Malfoy had been as a kid, the more stress he had been under from Daddy Death. It almost put the heights of dickery that he’d reached in sixth year into perspective. “I got caught up.”

Draco picked up his broom again and turned away from Harry. His shoulders were stiff, but he continued buffing out a grass stain without saying anything else, so Harry took that as his invitation to continue.

“I went to get everything, and that was fine. I saw a couple of friends by chance, and then I thought, I hadn’t been out in a while and I ought to pop in on Ron and Hermione before they popped in here.”

“You could have stopped to send an Owl.”

Now that Draco wasn’t looking at him, Harry felt free to lay back. It felt a little strange to lay in Draco’s bed with him there, but it had been a long day. “Ron’s brother tried to kill himself. And- I stayed longer than I thought.”

Draco had covered the stain up to his satisfaction, and was reaching for the sealant. “Which one?” He uncapped it with one hand, holding the broom in place so it didn’t roll and muck up the new varnish. “The twin, I expect.”

Harry nodded, then remembered that Draco couldn’t see. “Yeah.” He was surprised that Draco was so perceptive, but then, Malfoy had had very few people to talk to for the last year. Especially the last few months. It wasn’t any surprise that he’d be more thoughtful than Harry remembered. He’d always been smart, and it wasn’t like they’d talked much before.

That was enough mental complimenting of Malfoy - Harry kept talking, if only to process his own feelings. “It was awful. We - me and Hermione - we took Ron home. To the Burrow, that’s their house. It’s weird not to go too. Hermione and I always spend a part of the summer there. They always say I’m family, but it’s weird, with Ginny.”

“You haven’t been going to the dinners.”

“Yeah.” He watched Draco’s shoulders relaxed as he worked. “I mean, no.”

“She’s with Thomas again?”

Harry frowned. “How did you know? Did you hear something?”

Draco paused for a second, but didn’t laugh. “I was at Hogwarts last year.” 

Something twisted in Harry, that same familiar ache. He loved Ginny, and he loved Dean, and he was happy for them both. Part of him wondered if he was just jealous that they’d been together at Hogwarts while a locket seared his chest in the Forest of Dean. It made him feel a little foolish, thinking that everyone down to Malfoy had seen it happening. “I felt bad leaving Hermione tonight,” he said instead. It was nice to confide in someone, even if it was only Malfoy. It wasn’t like Malfoy would tell anyone.

“Granger’s capable,” Draco said, though it sounded begrudging.

“I just feel like I’ve abandoned both of them lately. I’ve been lying to them ever since I knew you were here, and they’re both going through a lot. Her parents, and now his brothers.”

“We’re all going through a lot.” Draco set his broom aside to dry. “I, for example, have new insight into your orphan status.”

“Fuck, Malfoy….” Harry sat back up. Draco looked at him, and his face had set back into a mask of cool air. Harry had mourned his parents for years without even knowing them - it had to be infinitely harder and more complicated for Draco. Harry wanted to say that he’d owed Narcissa his life. That he didn’t blame Draco anymore for what he’d done as a kid. That he was sorry he’d said anything. Instead he passed the shopping bag over and asked, “Did you eat dinner?”

This time Draco helped him lay out ingredients and fetch out bowls, though he still wasn’t making eye contact and he’d taken a handful of potions into the bathroom with him before coming down. Harry had left his wand out on the counter, and Draco had wordlessly put it back in his pocket when he came back in.

“Do you have any of those little ceramic baking things?” Harry asked, sniffing the sage before laying it next to the thyme on the cutting board.

“You mean ramekins?” Draco sounded amused. His voice was thicker and lazier, like he’d taken a pain potion. Harry hadn’t known he was in any pain. “Little ceramic ramekins?”

“You know what I mean.” Harry started chopping while he got them out. “Would you mind heating some butter?”

He got Draco started on the dough until he had pulsed together apple, onion, pork, bacon, and spice, then had Draco stir them in a pan while he took over setting the dough in place. “Ramekins,” he muttered to himself as he smoothed the dough out inside, and Malfoy snorted next to him.

“Maybe you _can_ be taught,” Draco admitted, although it sounded like he was still making fun of Harry. “It’s late, didn’t you eat already?”

Harry shrugged. “I can always eat. One of the few benefits of my childhood.” The air was starting to smell good, like meat and sweet apple, and Harry put together an egg wash before leaving for the lavatory. He lingered for a moment, so that when he came back in, Draco was spooning the cooked mixture into the dough-filled ramekins. 

“Nice,” he said mildly, and began pinching more dough into place to close the pork pies, Draco only a moment’s hesitation behind. 

Cooking together — or teaching Malfoy indirectly to cook — was one thing, but waiting around for dinner to cook was another. Harry cleared his throat and went for the tea, needing something else to do with his hands. 

Draco misread his nervous energy, squinting at him before he ventured to ask “Are you thinking of going back to Grimmauld now?” 

“Can’t wait to get rid of me, eh?” Harry joked weakly, but Malfoy just waited. Harry sighed. “No. I mean, I was thinking of it, but I don’t know if I should. When I got there today they were happy to see me, but no one had called me. I think… I just feel like I’m in the way of them now. Like they need time to be a couple and not be on another mad Harry adventure. It’s like everything’s over now and they don’t need me. I almost wonder if it’s better they’re not around me to heal.” 

Draco nodded. “Far be it from me to cast aspersions on the three-headed dog you’ve always been, but you’re worse off for not being in the couple of the group. They have each other to lean on. I’m sure it’s nothing against you deliberately. My parents were the same way.” 

Harry frowned. Lucius and Narcissa had clearly loved each other, it was true, but it was odd to compare them to Ron and Hermione. And did Draco mean they had left him out of their bond? He’d always thought the Malfoys were a trio. Either way, it was sad that Draco didn’t have them anymore, either to complete the trio or to welcome him in. 

They ate the pork pies standing up in the kitchen, Draco dripping grease over the newspapers he spread across the table. Harry skimmed them for a while, equal parts amused and offended by the public perception of his last years’ reality. Draco lingered over a spread about his father, a few recent pieces about the reparations to Hogwarts, and found a full-page spread of photos of Harry, published when he’d been in hiding. 

“Great, they helped everyone keep an eye out for me,” Harry groused, wiping crumbs from his mouth, while Draco laughed at the headline _POTTER POWER: OUR SEXY SAVIOR_. 

“At least you’re a sexy savior,” he retorted, folding one side of the paper down so Harry could see its cover. _EVIL’S MISSING HEIR: THE MYSTERY OF DRACO MALFOY_. “I’m some kind of invisible man.” 

“They got over that, you’re dead now,” Harry assured him, and had a crumpled paper tossed at him in response. 

They watched The Craft after dinner and Draco laughed himself sick at every scene with magic in it. His laugh sounded a little stale, but soon the girls were playing Light As A Feather, Stiff As A Board, and Harry laughed, too. 


	16. Chapter 16

The next day Harry Apparated to Grimmauld before sunrise and insisted on accompanying Hermione to a breakfast that he also had to insist on. He steeled himself with love for her and nodded through an hour’s nervous rambling about Arithmancy, before picking up another pair of coffees to go and Apparating back to the Manor, hands full. He left a warming charm on one cup in the kitchen and dropped some food for the koi before opening the huge front doors to let the birds out, following them onto the lawn with his own cooling cup in hand.

This early in the morning, the Manor felt the most innocent, its bushes hanging lower with dew as bees nosed along their flowers. The sunlight was weak but greatly appreciated, and Harry lifted his face to it as he walked down the main path to the gardens. He was surprised to see movement behind a basil plant, Malfoy becoming more visible after a moment, low to the ground. He was wearing his nice clothes again, despite the dirt he was now kneeling in, and it felt strangely right to see him in pressed trousers and a button-down, incongruous though it was to the greenhouse behind him.

Draco lifted his head, and then when he recognized Harry, his hand. Harry nodded back, waiting to speak until he’d come up to the garden’s gate. The shed was to his left, the house behind him, and Malfoy had filled a basket with aromatic greens.

“Potions?” Harry asked, gesturing with his chin at the spiralled plant Draco was plucking leaves off of now.

Draco shook his head, blond strands moving and then sticking to his cheek where a shine belied his sweat. “I hate potions.”

Harry frowned. “But…”

“But I’m good at Potions, and something about Snape, and blah blah blah?” Draco glanced at Harry, smiled to himself at whatever he saw, and kept plucking. He dropped each thin ribbon of leaf into his basket, and they twirled through the air before landing. “You can be good at something and not like it, you know. Severus was a good teacher.”

Harry shrugged, not arguing when he thought about the half-blood prince and Occlumency and the terrible things that Harry was good at. Draco seemed to expect an argument, though, and he watched Harry for another moment before he stood, wiping his hands off and handing the basket over.

“I’ll just carry this, shall I,” Harry said dryly, following Draco back up the path.

“Did you check on Weasley?” he asked, instead of responding, and Harry felt a flush climb over his cheeks.

“No, Hermione. I should have, though, shouldn’t I? I’ll go back out later.”

“Send an Owl,” Draco advised. “Or, I don’t know, a koi. Or one of my peacocks.”

“They like me more than you,” Harry insisted, and considered the temptation to drop Malfoy’s leaves. He imagined them being scattered across the ground, and then thought of the hair stuck to Malfoy’s cheek, and kept walking.

“You gave them all female names.” Draco was walking ahead of him now, but Harry could practically _hear_ his eyes rolling. “They’re male peacocks.”

“You don’t know that,” Harry insisted, although he had the annoying feeling he did.

Draco didn’t even bother to answer, but he did hold the door open to the front hall, letting Harry pass before swinging it shut behind them. He followed Harry to the kitchens, where he made a pleased sound upon discovering the coffee, but didn’t say thank you before picking it up. He just took a sip and pointed to the magic cupboard. When Harry opened it, he found an herb drawer, which accepted the bundle of greenery he dumped inside and immediately began organizing it, labels springing up wherever a new bunch folded together.

“Cool,” Harry couldn’t help but say, watching the tidy piece of magic.

“For cooking,” Draco said, obviously and a little stiffly.

“Thank you.” Harry turned from the drawer and smiled at him. Draco turned away, but Harry thought he might have been about to smile back.

Draco had cleaned up after some of Harry’s messy renovations, but he’d left the koi inside, and they vanished the floor to dip their feet while they sipped the rest of their coffee. It was a weird sort of feeling, casual companionship from Malfoy as though they were sitting in some shared common room, but Harry appreciated it, after the day before.

“So, uh.” Draco turned toward him and expectantly, and Harry found he has nothing to say. He didn’t want to talk about anything heavy, not really, and tackling the unsolved matter of Malfoy’s continued existence seemed like it would take more than coffee. In the face of Draco’s mild grey stare, he only found himself able to say, “what are you up to today?”

Draco seemed to press a smile away with his lips. “Why? Fancy getting beat at Quidditch?”

“As if you even could,” Harry shot back, truly indignant.

“Hmm,” was all Draco said in response, before he turned and bolted toward the stairs.

“Oh!” Without a second though, Harry gave chase.

He caught up halfway up the second landing, knocking Draco’s slim shoulder aside to pass. They scrambled together through the door of the Quidditch room. Draco tried to shove Harry sideways into the doorframe. Harry stumbled, then dove after him, grasping for Draco’s Firebolt a second after Draco plucked it off the wall. Harry barked out a breath that was half-laugh and found an old Nimbus, its lines familiar under his hand.

“You’re so slow,” Draco complained. He had opened the window and now stood in the breeze that had wafted inside, preparing to hop out. His hair hadn’t been trimmed in months but was free from gel: Harry wondered briefly if it wouldn’t get in his eyes.

“I just don’t feel the need to cheat.” Harry hefted the broom in his hand, weighing the urge to huck it at Malfoy. “Unlike some people.”

“If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying hard enough,” Draco advised in a perfect imitation of Lucius, before jumping out the window.

For a moment Harry’s heart stopped, and then Draco rose slowly back into view, grinning from atop his broom. He looked brilliant and untethered, free from the walls of the manor and all of its expectations, at least in that moment. Harry glanced below Draco’s dangling feet: the ground was a hundred yards below. 

“Coming, Potter?”

“Did you jump?” Harry was getting excited in that way that only flying opened up in his chest. Anticipation, adrenaline, that pure childhood joy of discovering another dimension. Draco drew backwards in the air, showing off while giving him room.

Harry clambered into the windowsill and looked back down. Below, one of the fountains was bubbling away, its tiles shifting through mythological mosaics.

He got the broom in place and leapt.

It was insanity, plummeting sharply downward with the wind everywhere but his lungs, jerking the broom back up and just barely clamping in with his knees. He climbed back up in the air, jerky and still breathless, a shot of joy stabbed through him. He’d been flying on his own here, but it hadn’t felt like this. 

“Ready?” Draco was matching the smile Harry could feel on his own face. They hovered beside the wall of the house, facing each other.

“No,” Harry tried, but it was too late: Draco had kicked his foot against the manor and pushed off, folding himself down into a stripe of speed.

Harry sped after him, and a game of chase began. Harry had been going south across the grounds, but Draco hugged the building in the other direction. He had to drop a little to keep up, and then zoom around a gargoyle that Draco had been trying to steer him into. 

“You fucker!” He caught up, finally, and tugged Draco’s broom. Draco kicked backwards at him, the fucker, and it went on like that, cheap and dirty and dangerous.

They swept over the gardens, and the small pond that the koi had come from, and a hedge that seemed to be hiding the concrete remains of an enormous wizard’s chess set. 

It was hours before they got sick of flying, weaving back through the trees to the concrete benches where Harry had been completing his morning trips. Draco touched down first. Harry followed after, noting as he descended that Draco had picked up some leaves in his hair. 

He didn’t say anything about it, instead taking his normal seat. “I always stop here.”

“I know.” Draco brushed a hand through his hair, found the leaves, and scowled at him. Harry pressed his lips together to keep from laughing. “Now who’s the fucker?”

“You been watching me?” Harry set the broom beside him carefully — more carefully than he would set his own broom down, without being under Draco’s watchful eye. Draco didn’t answer, and Harry was relieved. He didn’t really like to think about the show he’d given: he was creepingly becoming aware of how weird and antisocial he had been, how naked and crazy. For some reason, even though he was now stuck keeping Malfoy’s secrets, things felt more settled now. Less manic. The exercise had helped, certainly, and having someone to live with made a difference too. Harry had always liked having roommates at Hogwarts, and it was good to have someone to hang out with. Not just someone.

“We used to have horses,” Draco said suddenly, shading his eyes. He looked like he was miles away, seeing something from another time. “My dad got really into horse racing.”

“What, the Muggle kind?”

Draco snorted. “No, of course not. Enchanted horses, magical breeds. But he kept some here. I used to feed them.”

“Did you have peacocks, too?”

“The same ones, actually.” Draco peered at him now, and Harry became conscious of the sweat on his forehead and at his underarms from their flight. He pressed his arms closer into himself. “They live a while.”

“I always wanted a pet growing up.” Harry settled on keeping his arms crossed. “I was so happy to have Hedwig over the summers.”

“Your owl?” Harry nodded, his throat closing up, as it always did when he thought of her. She’d been a good girl. Draco hesitated, then reached out, giving his forearm an awkward pat. Because his arms were crossed, Draco’s hand caught for a moment before sliding off. It helped.

“My mom would braid their hair,” Draco added, perhaps sensing Harry’s momentary slip into malaise. “She had a way with hair, she would always braid my dad’s, too. I think she wanted me to grow mine out, too. She used to play with it a lot when I was a kid.”

Harry buried his face in his hands. He was missing his owl, and Draco had lost his parents. He was hiding from the world, and Draco was no longer welcome there. “I’m such an idiot,” he sighed, mostly at himself.

“Everyone knows that,” Draco agreed mildly, and slapped him hard on the back. “Let’s go.”

They picked up their brooms, and went.


	17. Chapter 17

Harry went to the Weasley’s every morning after that, where he and Hermione would sit with Ron in the kitchen and whisper to each other. Ron was trying to keep his spirits up, but every day that went by, it seemed more and more wrong to have the Burrow feel so gloomy and empty. George was returning from St. Mungo’s soon, and Molly’s nervous energy seemed everpresent.

Hermione saved them, as always. She was lost to academic ramblings by her second cup of tea each day, and the looks Ron shot Harry around her hair felt like home. 

“The restorations are done, at least, so I’ll have access to everything I need on-campus,” she finally concluded that day, lifting her mug to her lips before discovering that she’d drained it in her distraction. 

Ron waved his hand at the teapot, which floated over to pour her another cuppa. “On-campus? You don’t mean she went with Plan C?”

“She did!” Hermione smirked at Ron, who went pink and happy. “I meant to tell you, I found out yesterday.”

“What’s Plan C?” Harry was picking a scone apart with his fingers. He and Draco had made a feast of waffles the night before, the manor supplying a heavy metal griddle that Draco had turned and turned with a glee that bordered on mania. “What were Plan B and A, for that matter?”

“McGonagall wasn’t sure where to put returning students. You don’t know this?” Ron was grinning still. “Plan A was to stick them in with the seventh years.”

“Not so bad.” Harry shredded the last piece of scone with his thumb, ignoring the look Hermione was now giving him.

“It would have been too crowded, though, and the stonework wasn’t taking well to expansion charms what with the extensive rebuilding. It was hard enough re-establishing all the perimeter fortifications.” Ron had sliced two scones into halves and stacked them into a wobbling clotted-cream tower. Now it was too big to fit into his mouth, and he was trying to mash the mess down with a jam knife.

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Hermione interjected, though she saved them from explaining how.

“Well, Plan B was temporary housing of some sort.” Ron knocked the scone stack off-balance and sighed, then grabbed a fork to eat the resulting mess. “Like when Durmstrang stayed on their ship. But again, perimeter… something something.”

“Protego structūra theory,” Hermione supplied, and took her fresh cup of tea from the air. She smiled at Ron over the top of it, and he aimed his jammy grin at her. “Anyway, Plan C was renting student flats in Hogsmeade. I’ll be sharing a place with the other returning Gryffindor girls.”

“And there are no returning Gryffindor girls.” Ron’s wolfish expression made sense now.

“Wait, you’re moving to Hogsmeade? What about Grimmauld Place?” Harry brushed his hands off in his lap. Since when did his best friends plan their lives without him? 

“Oh, we’ll need both places, mate.” Ron looked to him with genuine concern. “Don’t worry, we’re not ditching you. Hermione can stay there for class and studying, but I’ll need to be in London for Auror training.”

“Auror training?” How had he forgotten about Auror training? “Did you sign up?”

“It’s next week. You don’t remember? We talked about it all last year.”

“Yeah, of course. Next week.” Harry let them keep talking, though he was sure they sensed his mood shift. They’d planned it all out, Ron and Hermione, and all he had to do was go along with the plan. It was a good plan, too. What he’d always wanted, what they’d all worked so hard for. He picked up another scone and began to pull it into dust.

After breakfast Harry returned to a slow-moving Draco, who looked and sounded like he’d been in the pain potions again. Harry had immediately decided against suggesting they go flying, though he still needed a distraction. They wound up thumbing through Lucius’ study, picking through the drawers and shelves that Harry had left alone so far.

It turned out that Lucius Malfoy had been something of a secret dork. They found the game boards in the bottom left corner of the enormous oak desk, under a stack of Martin Miggs comics. “ _That’s_ where he kept them,” Draco mumbled, his voice sluggish, though he perked up a bit when they started laying them out. Runok Ko, wizard’s chess, Snitch Snatcher… Draco touched the boxes with a reverence that spoke to their place in his childhood. It was still hard to imagine the Malfoys as a loving family, but the way that Draco had a favorite color for the chessboard implied volumes.

They set it out at the kitchen table. Draco took his side, the lighter pieces, and Harry lined up the dark ones for a pre-game pep talk.

Draco didn’t ask what had brought Harry back in a bad mood, and Harry didn’t ask what potions Draco had taken. They just began to play.

It turned out that Draco, though a solid player, was nowhere near as adept as Ron at the game. For once, Harry stood a chance, and echoes of a familiar rivalry sprung up between them as they played. Harry even kept his face stony and began to cheat, setting up a two-dimensional feint as good as any Wronksi. It took Draco the loss of two pawns and a knight to catch on, and the dawning indignance on his face was worth every bit of effort.

“Call yourself a bloody Gryffindor,” Draco huffed. He looked as though he was on the verge of pushing all the pieces to the floor, spoilt only child that he was.

Harry couldn’t stop laughing, now that he’d been found out. Tears were leaking from the corners of his eyes as he wheezed for breath, even as Draco’s foot lashed out and found his shin under the table. “If you’re not… cheating… you’re not…. oh my god.” He kicked back, and then the board did get knocked over as they were drawn into an entirely immature battle. 

It ended with pieces on the floor, tea on the table, and a silence that was more comfortable than the one they’d been in before.

“I almost was Slytherin,” Harry volunteered, after they’d sat in peace for a moment, taking in the mess. “The Hat wasn’t sure.”

Draco’s head snapped up so quickly that he caught Harry in a surprising wash of eye contact. An instant of intimacy, of understanding, and then it was over.

Draco ducked his head.

“I’m not surprised,” he drawled, voice thick again, and Harry didn’t stop to think about what he wasn’t saying. _He_ was surprised, not at the Sorting Hat, but at the strange sort of comfort he’d started deriving from the manor and its strange hidden inhabitant. A month ago he was throwing fits of accidental magic again, as though he were ten years old and missing out on a whole world he’d never thought to imagine. Now he was laughing again, sharing things with Malfoy, cheating at chess just to drive him crazy.

It was almost like he was flirting. The swoop in his stomach was the same as teasing Ginny, as the adrenaline joy of jumping out the window. But that was impossible. He’d just always had a strange way with Malfoy, a methodical madness borne of parallel experience. 

They paged through the comics next. Draco scoffed at Marvin the Mad Muggle’s misadventures in space, and it took Harry a half hour to convince him that muggles actually had made it to the moon. They ended up back in the living room, where Harry searched his collection for educational films, and settled on Star Wars. That only confused Malfoy more, and he spent the first hour pointing out what technology was clearly magical, and what aliens were based on Ukrainian merpeople. Harry gave up.

Harry had given up the pretense behind teaching Draco to cook, and now forced him into chopping from the start. Predictably, Draco used his wand for everything from peeling to stirring, even levitating the pizza dough from Harry’s hands when he went to toss it.

“Give that back,” Harry demanded, reaching up into the air above his head. He only succeeded in brushing the floating disc, sending flour snowing down into his wild hair. He swiped for it again, shirt coming up his belly as he reached.

Draco dropped it on his head.

A few desperate minutes of all-out war broke out, each of them scuffling for an upper ground that didn’t exist in the world of food fights. There was something incredibly satisfying about flinging a handful of sliced pepperoni right into Malfoy’s bright, stupid face, and an exhilaration in the way he had to duck Malfoy’s reach after that, in the sharp bank of pain that came when he slammed his elbow into the counter while evading.

Harry’s scalp was gritty with cornmeal and flour, and Draco had a smear of tomato sauce on his arm by the time they stopped, and the pantry refused to replace the food they had wasted.

“Rude,” Draco mumbled, as though he weren’t the one who had started it, and they wound up with a bizarre but delicious pizza cobbled together from what was left — purple kale and crushed walnuts and apple slices and some dark cured meat that Draco said was elk.

They Apparated to the top of the manor at sunset to eat and to drink. Draco had pulled another bottle of wine from his secret hiding spot, and he opened it with a lazy pass of his wand.

“You should see how muggles open wine,” Harry said wistfully, laying back on the tiles with his plate on his chest. The sun was creeping down slowly, transforming the sky around it into orange and purple bruises. “It’s barbaric.”

“I’m sure,” Draco said, but didn’t follow that with anything about the barbarism of muggles, to Harry’s relief. Instead he said “Is a Hutt a kind of flobberworm?”

“Probably.” Harry reached for the bottle, and Draco passed it over. They’d given up on glasses a long time ago, and now the moisture of Draco’s mouth on the lip of the bottle was a part of the ritual.

It really was strange, how much more comfortable he felt with Malfoy these days than his own friends. Strange how not-strange it was. There was no plan here to follow, no expectation. Harry suspected that Draco wouldn’t blink at Harry’s worst thoughts and deeds, could match or beat each one of them. And yet if he didn’t think of Draco as evil or awful or unforgivable anymore, how could Harry think of himself that way? It was a perverse comfort, yet one he was eager to embrace. To test.

“I cast Imperius to break into Gringotts. And I Crucified someone during the battle,” he tried first, testing the waters. Draco gave him a sharp sideways glance, but didn’t answer. “Carrow.”

“Fucking Carrow.” Draco was silent for another moment. “I used it on Rowle.”

“I forgot.” Harry remembered the vision, Voldemort forcing Draco’s shaking hand. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be sorry for getting away from that idiot.” Draco brushed his pants off. “I didn’t know you knew.”

“I could see a lot of what Voldemort did, by the end,” Harry admitted, ignoring Draco’s flinch at the name. It was hard to believe he’d recently walked the halls below them, holding court where they now watched Star Wars. “It’s why I did Occlumency with Snape, we thought he might have been able to see me.”

“Fucking Snape,” Draco said, in an entirely different tone of voice. “Always protecting idiots.”

“He protected you too, you know,” Harry pointed out, in a surprising surge of protectiveness for their former professor.

“I know.” Draco brushed his fingers across Harry’s knee, which made him start until he realized that Draco was reaching for the bottle. He handed it over. “I meant we’re both idiots.”

“We were kids.”

“Not anymore, I guess.” Draco drained the bottle and threw it from the roof, winding his arm back to fling it high in the sky. Harry squinted at it and made a trigger motion with his fingers, shattering it in mid-air. “Nice. _Accio_ Rothschild.”

Another bottle sailed up from the chimney, bursting out in a shower of dust before it settled in Draco’s hand. He coughed, then laughed.

“ _Accio_ much?” Harry teased, and began looking for more things to throw off the roof. He wound up pitching pebbles into the air, Draco aiming his wand at each one. He missed the last one, and it shot backwards, smashing into a shield that Draco slipped in front of Harry at the last second. 

“Aw, thanks for protecting my face.” Harry realized he was teasing again, and flashed back to his thought from earlier — was he being friendly? or _flirting_ — but then Draco was digging his elbow into Harry’s ribs and they were trying to shove each other off the roof and then they had to rescue the wine bottle from sliding off the side and things calmed back down.

“I lied to my parents a lot this year,” Draco said after another long silence. It was his turn to unburden himself, apparently. “I know that’s stupid to care about— I did a lot worse. But I still feel bad about it. Maybe I should have been more honest with them… not about everything. But about, you know.”

“Recognizing me?”

“No, not that. That’s the only good lie I told. But about being scared. About not wanting to do it. We all had to pretend that it was such an honor, following his commands, and maybe if I had… had told them…”

“They would have kicked out Voldemort and started family counseling? Draco, you did what you could. I think they were probably scared, too. None of you wanted to lose each other, and I don’t blame you for that.”

“You don’t blame my dad?” Draco scoffed at him and handed the wine back. Harry brushed his wrist when he took it, holding Draco’s eyes.

“I’m not saying he did the right thing. But I understand more than I used to.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t have a family,” Draco groused, his casual cruelty making Harry laugh for once.

“I’m pretty sure my parents would have been fighting next to me if they were still around. But I don’t know if I could have walked into the woods if they had been back at the castle. I guess we’ll never know.”

“I wonder if they’d say it was worth it.” Draco didn’t say it, but Harry could tell he wasn’t just talking about Lily and James.

Harry passed the bottle and watched him drink, the long, cool plane of his neck stretching and swallowing. Somewhere around fifth year girls had started giggling at the sight of him, and at the time Harry had been furious that they saw Malfoy as rich and handsome and bitingly clever, instead of seeing the evil bastard he had believed Malfoy to be. Even after he’d grown accustomed to recognizing male beauty alongside female, grown used to the butterflies Oliver Wood and Charlie Weasley could spring on him, the fact of Malfoy’s perfect face had continued to bother him. It had seemed unfair that someone so awful hadn’t looked as bad as he was, hadn’t worn his dark soul on his face the way Voldemort did. But Malfoy was paler now and too-thin, and all Harry could do was blame the evil of others. In a luxurious manse that was packed with antiques and art, Draco had always been the most precious object inside.

“I think it was worth it,” he said finally, deciding for the deceased Malfoys. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

“Here I am,” Malfoy agreed, raising the bottle. “And here you are. The Great Potter. I’m actually relieved you know the Unforgivables, I was so sure you’d take down the Dark Lord with Expelliarmus and friendship.”

“I did actually use those,” Harry admitted, grinning when he made Draco snort. 

“Of course you did. And you played dead better than any possum.”

“Oh, no, I actually died,” Harry corrected, feeling embarrassed for some reason. The people who knew had treated him like some kind of reborn superhero, and he didn’t know what he’d do if Malfoy reacted the same way. He felt like telling the truth here, though.

Draco stared at him for a moment, then stood. “ _Ugh_ ,” he said with feeling. And then: “Are you coming inside?”

“Apparently I am.” Harry scrambled up and rolled his eyes at Malfoy, but it was just to cover his relief. Draco ducked the eaves above the window they’d climbed out of and disappeared. Harry picked up the near-empty bottle and glanced back out at the sky. It was dark now, the warmth of the day leeching into a preview of the autumn to come. 

He didn’t know what it held, but he thought he was in the right place to find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this is sooooo self-indulgent for me! I'm sorry if it's slow going.


	18. Chapter 18

When they went back inside, Harry found that he was drunker than anticipated. He tripped over the windowsill coming in, and had to catch himself against the wall. “Fuck.”

“Some Seeker.” Draco seemed strangely upright. He held it together all the way down the stairs, while Harry had to clutch the railing. He didn’t mind, but it kind of hurt his eyes how the bright top of Draco’s head kept blurring into the magically-enhanced candlelight from the chandeliers overhead.

Harry went straight to the kitchen for water and a slice of leftover pizza to gnaw on. Draco followed, though he acted like it was a coincidence that they had both wound up in the same room. He dug an oily-looking dessert liqueur out of the freezer and tipped it back. 

“Ugh,” Harry told him, and refilled his water glass. The kitchen was spinning a little, but he thought that he wouldn’t throw up if he focused. “You’re disgusting. How are you not drunk? You drank more than me.”

“I’m better at drinking than you. Superior genes.”

“Christ.”

“I don’t mean magically, Merlin, Potter.” Malfoy set the bottle down, a little harder than he had to. “I’m better than you in lots of ways that don’t involve my father’s outdated ideas about blood purity.”

“That’s comforting, thanks. You’re just a generic asshole, not a prejudiced one.”

“Exactly.” Malfoy brushed his hands against each other smartly. “Now, I believe you mentioned more War Stars.”

They camped out in front of the screen. Harry Accioed down a mattress and every pillow in the house, and they claimed different sides. A fluffy stack of pillows at the foot of the bed held Draco’s bottle and Harry’s empty glass, tipped on its side. A pair of statues from the hallway had hopped in to watch, stone lion and unicorn alike curled up in front of a low-burning fire. It wasn’t anything like the bonfire that the fireplace had room for, but the overall effect was nice and cozy after being out on the roof. 

“You watched movies when I was asleep before, didn’t you?” Harry asked, thinking of how he’d assumed the house was playing them. 

“Mm.” Draco seemed to be falling asleep now, his chin tucked into his chest as he blinked at the scenes of spacecraft shooting across the wall. “Mhm.” His voice had gone low and sleepy, and it sent a thrill through Harry that startled him.

He put it down to opportunity: he knew from years of hassling Ron in the dorms that Draco was at the perfect stage for truth-telling. Harry pushed his advantage. “Do you like cooking?”

Draco, now a lump of blankets, lifted one shoulder. Harry took that as a yes. 

“Do you hate having me here?” It took all of his courage to say it. How could the answer be no, and yet he didn’t want it to be a yes. Draco just snorted and rolled over. The blankets shifted, a triangle of space appearing that was just wide enough for him to peer through. In the warmth of the firelight, his eyes were almost amber.

“You just showed up.” 

Harry slid down onto his back and turned his face to the window of Draco. “True.” He wondered if he should apologize, but Draco half-laughed before he could, his eyes sliding shut.

“Fucking Potter,” he mumbled, but he didn’t sound upset. “Always fucking Potter.”

Harry waited a long minute, but Draco didn’t speak again. Even from a metre away, his eyelids looked translucent, the bags under them as deep as the manor’s shadows.

They must have slipped into sleep.

The blue of a dream washed over him, the warmth of the blankets mingling with the yawning, ancient air between the lines of the floor and the arcs of the beams. Harry was hot, cold, floating, spinning.

And he wasn’t alone. He’d never been alone in this place, not really, and he wasn’t now. There was Draco, next to him in nebulous nothing. Draco, the long pale insides of his arms like stripes of light around Harry’s waist.

Harry curled and flexed, tensing then relaxing as Draco’s long fingers skidded over his dark and hair-spattered chest, catching against his ribs and his muscles. It didn’t feel strange that they were touching, or strange that they were floating, or strange that they were pressed naked against each other like fruits on an overripe tree.

How could it be strange? They were one and the same.

Where Draco before had hung weightless in a swallowing water, he now drifted free from gravity. Harry fell and fell into his chest and was held aloft, feet in the air but safe in the space of the walls that wrapped around them. It felt right, natural, rotating and colliding gently like new planets in a house-shaped universe.

Harry turned his head and his body followed, rotating on a floating axis that would never let him go. Their chests bumped, their legs tangled, and Harry watched himself reach for Draco’s face, holding it carefully to take it in.

Draco smiled at him. Lately his lips were always fresh-chewed, his eyes always packed with exhaustion, but this dream Draco was as fresh and perfect as cool milk. He was beautiful, and Harry said so - or meant to, and then somehow Draco knew. He smiled with teeth whiter than his face, eyes squinting into grey tangles of eyelash. “Fucking Potter,” he sighed, still smiling.

Fucking Malfoy. “I think you’re strong,” Harry told him, still not sure if he was speaking. He wanted to kiss Draco’s squinting smile, suddenly, and he did, natural as anything. It made sense the way spinning in nothingness made sense - after all, they were magic, him and Draco and the huge home that encircled them in its arms. “You’ve survived so much.”

“You saved everyone,” Draco told him back. “You really did it.” And Harry believed it for the first time, felt his throat close on the panic and the pain and the relief of it, the sacrifice and confusion and vestiges of rotting, leftover fear. He swallowed it, and a little piece of ugliness stayed down.

It felt like what he needed. Draco felt like what he needed, ribs and teeth and fingertips. So he kissed him again. Draco’s lips were a soft press of sweetness, opening in a slip of cool sparks that was a slow motion revelation. Their bodies bumped and pressed and aligned in a delicate hardness that sent shivers through Harry’s scalp and spine and teeth alike. Every twist of air and fate brought their hips together, the friction buffeting them ever upward toward the light of every chandelier above. It was erotic in the most painful way, burning through Harry so fiercely that he wasn’t sure if he would come or burst into light.

He came, of course, body shuddering down to earth in an instant.

It was startling to be awake again. Being on the ground was strange, and it took Harry a moment to remember where he was. He was cushioned in a bed, but he wasn’t in a bedroom, and he wasn’t alone.

Draco.

The dream hit him and his head snapped to the side. He was terrified that Draco would be awake, watching him, knowing the things that Harry had just been imagining. But he was asleep, eyes closed around some dream of his own. His arm was stretched out across a pillow, reaching toward Harry.

The fire had died down, and the projector was sending white light out onto the wall before them, no movies playing through the night now that Draco was watching with him. They’d entered into a secret friendship, a strange intimacy that only now was Harry assessing with wide-open eyes. It must have been that shared link that tangled itself up in Harry’s brain and sent him confusing signals. It couldn’t mean anything.

He shifted, carefully trying to angle himself up and out of the bed so that he could clean up. The statues had fallen asleep in front of the fire, and he gave them a wide berth on the way to the door.

Harry stopped in the door frame and glanced back. Draco _was_ beautiful, he could admit that his brain was right about that, at least. In his sleep he looked peaceful and perfect, nothing like the difficult and infuriating person he would become again in the morning. The spoilt and vicious Draco who got under Harry’s skin, who understood Harry’s darker impulses, who missed his mother. It was too much to process, and that was without considering the black Dark Mark that was etched on his outstretched arm.

Harry went upstairs to clean up, and he didn’t come back down until morning.


	19. Chapter 19

He was late already when the Aurors came.

Harry had gotten up early to have breakfast with Ron and Hermione at the Burrow, as he had all week. Ron was going back and forth now, packing up again for the flat in Hogsmeade. The start of the semester and the Auror sign-ups were coming up quickly, and each day had become busy for them, each morning catch-up precious. Harry skipped his morning flights to go now, knowing he could come back and chase Draco through the grounds all day once he’d done his duty to friends and family. It felt good to get out, too, remember the people he loved and his life outside of the manor. At least when that life was private, and comfortable, and stocked with Molly’s cooking.

Even Draco had been converted by the waves of leftovers coming home with Harry, and he popped up while Harry was yanking his cloak out from the pillows on the back of the couch. “Do you think she’ll do popovers again today? Dutch babies? Or are there leftover apricot scones?” He was wearing pajama pants and a hoodie that Harry had lent him and he had yet to return. Seeing him in it did things to Harry that he wasn’t sure he liked. He still hadn’t recovered from yesterday’s dreams, but he thought he’d hidden his awkwardness well enough.

Things were normal again now, the new normal that was easy banter and endless shoving - though each brush of contact made something dark flutter in his gut. It was all too easy to get caught up in some stupid conversation, something about apricots and Harry’s apelike clothing choices, the obvious pointing out of Draco wearing Harry’s clothes, the furious backtracking. The rap at the door took them both by surprise.

The warmth behind their bickering dissipated in an instant. Draco swung his head up to stare into Harry’s face, his eyes huge. “Did you—”

“ _No!_ Could it be a Death-”

“ _No!_ Maybe. Fuck.” Draco looked terrified. It was a familiar look on his face, one that sent pain and regret singing through Harry in complicated patterns. 

“Hide,” Harry decided, pulling his wand from the back of his beat-up jeans. “Go, it’s either for me or it’s nothing good.”

Draco’s face went through a dozen more pinched emotions that Harry wouldn’t have been able to read a month ago. Anger, at the implication that Harry would defend the manor better. Shame, at returning to hiding. And back to fear, above all a worn-in look of fear. “Okay. Harry- okay.”

Draco turned to the hall, and Harry went to answer the door. Someone knocked a second time, and the gargoyle closest to the door started a low warning yowl. How had anyone gotten past the Malfoy wards? Who could do that, and then choose to knock? He glanced back over his shoulder to ensure that Draco was out of sight, and caught a glimpse of him disappearing into one of the tapestries down the hallway, where Harry knew for a fact the wall was solid stone. 

For better or for worse, he was protecting this strange place and its secrets, Draco most of all. Harry opened the door.

“Harry Potter!” Two Aurors stood in the arched doorframe. They wore matching scarlet robes, but couldn’t have looked more different: he recognized Williamson, an ancient man with a riot of dreadlocks that were barely contained by his ponytail. The other was sandy blonde and tan, looking like an off-brand Australian Malfoy. He’d been the one to shout Harry’s name, and he followed it up with a wave of genial overfamiliarity, stepping over the door frame and clapping Harry on the back in the same gesture. It wasn’t an attack, but it didn’t help Harry relax any. “Good to see you, mate, good to see you.”

“Er, hello.” He was sure he would have remembered the new Auror if they’d met, but Hermione had warned Harry a thousand times that it was rude to ask people if you’ve met them before. It had been part of a common Hermione-lecture about learning how to live in the public eye. He rather thought she hadn’t meant hiding out at Malfoy Manor, but at least he could smile and nod at this Auror.

“Good to see you,” he managed. Hermione owed him.

“Good, good,” the blond repeated. Williamson stepped inside with him, giving Harry an apologetic half-smile.

“Potter,” he rumbled, “Glad to see you as well. Didn’t see you after the battle. Shacklebolt snatched you right up for the debrief. Have you met Savage?”

“No,” Harry said firmly, relieved. “All right?” They nodded at each other.

There was a beat. Savage glanced down the hall, clearly expecting to be invited further in. Harry stayed quiet. He was ready to hear what they had come about, and wasn’t willing to let them stumble upon the two teacups on the counter.

Williamson cleared his throat. “Well, Potter, we had an alert go off at this residence. One Mr. Malfoy’s wand being used? Now, he’s presumed dead, so we just have to check in. Standard stuff.” 

“Yeah, we thought we’d stop by in person!” Savage chirped. “After all, we’ll be working side by side soon enough. What are you doing in this creepy old place?”

Harry’s anger spiked into place, coming easily as ever. He bit some down with effort. “Well, as the Ministry knows, I inherited this _historic magical property_ and I have every right to be here. As for the wand, it’s also in my possession. It’s linked to the magic of the house, so it’s been helpful to use. Hermione Granger can attest to that, if you doubt me.”

“No one doubts you,” Williamson assured him. “I’ll be straight with you, Potter.”

“I wish you would,” Harry muttered, crossing his arms and giving the now-sheepish Savage another look. He hated to feel like a petulant child when dealing with Aurors, but he’d never been able to help it.

“The powers that be asked us to check in with you. Recruitment sign-ups open this weekend. Weasley has been dropping by for weeks already.”

Harry’s stomach twisted. He hadn’t known. It made sense, though: Ron’s face came to mind, bright and excited every time he mentioned training. “Er, well, I don’t have the NEWTs.”

“I think they’ll take extracurricular experience,” Savage chirped, confident again in his joke.

Harry tried to look friendly. “Well if I want to sign up then I know where to find you. Thanks for coming by.”

Williamson nodded, but Savage frowned. “If? We’re expecting you on the team. You’re not going back to Hogwarts, are you?”

“I’ll let you know what I decide.” Harry tried to sound firm, but there was a bottomless pit of doubt behind his words. Summer was ending and he had to decide his future, at least for the next year. What had happened to the time? He’d spent it all coaxing Draco out of the walls and watching old films, and he’d let that distract him from everything that had felt important beforehand. Now all he wanted to do was chase the Aurors away so he could eat scones and fly with Draco. The weight of responsibilities he’d had his whole life had finally waned a little, now that he didn’t have to be a live-in servant or a student or a warrior or a sacrificial pawn. He didn’t know if he wanted to carry that weight any more, if it was selfish not to. He certainly didn’t have an answer for Savage and Williamson right then. They were still looking at him, waiting, and Harry sighed. “I’ll talk to Ron about it today. I’m was just about to head over there.”

“Very good.” Williamson stuck his hand out and Harry shook it. “This place looks better than before, by the way. Good, friendly magical energy on the scan apart from the Malfoy wand. Seems like you’ve been good for the place.”

“It’s been good for me,” Harry said politely, meaning it with his entire heart. “You’ll hear from me soon.”

“We’d better!” Another joke from Savage, this one more desperately airy. Harry didn’t like him or his tan. He smiled and nodded, though, and they turned to go. It took everything he had to smile and wave at the door instead of slamming it at their backs.

Finally, they disappeared between two hedges at the end of the garden, and Harry let all the breath he’d been holding out at once. “Draco?”

Draco didn’t respond, so Harry knocked an all-clear onto the wall and went to tidy the kitchen. Maybe Draco was embarrassed at his reaction: he’d looked afraid enough. And he’d said _Harry_ , not Potter, and Harry had said _hide_ , and Draco had certainly let Harry save him before, but that hadn’t meant he’d liked it.

He decided to give Draco some space, and hopped into the Floo.


	20. Chapter 20

“You can’t be serious.”

Ron was as upset as Harry had ever seen him. His face matched his hair, both flaming red with the anger he was currently directing at Harry. Harry had intended to go over to talk about his hesitance, his doubts and fears. Instead he’d walked into the Burrow, hugged Molly, and announced that he wasn’t joining the Aurors. That’s when the yelling had started.

Hermione and Molly were edging out of the kitchen now, both seeming to feel that they ought to give Ron and Harry space. Ron wheeled on them. “‘Mione! Stay and tell Harry how fucking stupid he’s being.”

“Language, Ronald,” Molly said, but slipped out of the door when Ron turned his glare to her.

“He is fucking stupid.” This was aimed at Hermione now, although Harry could tell it was for his benefit. The anger that he’d built up at the Manor kicked back in, this time aimed at Ron, at Hermione’s helpless shrug.

“It’s his life, Ron,” she pointed out, and both Harry and Ron scoffed at the same time. 

Ron frowned at Harry. “Don’t make rude noises to my girlfriend.”

“First off, she’s not just your girlfriend, she’s also my best friend, so shut the fuck up.” The washing-up clattered into the sink behind them as Molly retreated to the far side of the house, and the suds splashed Harry’s jumper. He flicked the bubbles at Ron. “And so are you, this isn’t about that.”

“What’s it about, then? You’ve been weird all summer, mate, and now this? Who am I supposed to go through training with? Who am I going to partner with? What the hell are you going to do?”

“You have been working toward this for a long time, Harry,” Hermione interjected. She was leaning on the farthest wall now, apparently reluctant to come back in any further. “Remember all the extra classes you took? McGonagall really did a lot of work to help you.”

“I was a kid. I changed my mind.” He wanted to explain why he’d scoffed, how his life had _never_ been his own. He wanted to tell them about the aching fear he’d been feeling lately, whenever he thought about signing up to center the rest of his adult life around combat and curses. But he didn’t know how to say it.

“So my life goal is childish?” Ron was going from red to puce. “What happened? You can’t just hide in the Manor forever, we’ve barely gotten you out of it! Are you going back to Hogwarts with Hermione then? Are you going to burn down Grimmauld? Do you hate Quidditch? Who even are you?”

“Dial it down, please, Ron.” Hermione pushed off the wall and went to him, pulling Ron’s long, freckled fingers out of an angry gesture and into her own hands. “This must have been a hard decision for Harry, to make him change his mind.”

“But he won’t explain it!”

“I can’t!” Harry smacked the counter so hard his hand felt like it become one instantaneous bruise. “I can’t, but it’s not what I want anymore, and that’s all I know. That’s all I _can_ tell you!”

“So you do want to come back to school? McGonagall will help you sort out a new path, I’m sure. Maybe you could teach Defense.” Hermione perked up. “We could all share the flat!”

Harry scrubbed his hands over his face. “No. No, I don’t want that either. I mean, thank you, but I don’t want to make you guys share that place. And Grimmauld will be fine, and I love Quidditch. I love you both. I just need more time to decide what to do next. I’m not going to make some huge decision about my life in the next week.”

“No one’s saying you have to, Harry,” Hermione said in her most reasonable tone. “But it would be nice to have some path to go down. You can always use your Auror training to go into politics. Or you can study something you didn’t have time for in school, maybe Transfigurations?”

“Is it Ginny?” Ron gave him a hard look. “Is it because she’s leaving next week?”

Harry hesitated. He hadn’t expected to be handed an excuse. Ron didn’t understand the way his and Ginny’s love had devolved into something strong yet familial. He was tempted to take the excuse, even if Hermione wouldn’t fully buy it, but of course it wasn’t Ginny. Not with his dreams of Draco gnawing at him. Guilt rang through his body at the thought of keeping anything from Ron and Hermione, but he wasn’t about to tell them about a wet dream any time soon.

Ron took his hesitation as an answer. His face softened. “You know we’re still brothers, right mate?”

Good old Ron. Without a Horcrux weighing on him, he could always set his anger aside in favor of his loving side. He was more of a Molly than an Arthur, although Harry would never tell him that. He glanced at Hermione, who raised her eyebrows.

“Of course. Of course, Ron, I’m sorry that I won’t be beside you.” Harry shuffled forward, and Ron closed their distance with a bear-sized hug. Harry’s next words were lost in Ron’s Cannons sweater. “You’re going to do great, though. Everyone will see that.”

Ron squeezed a little harder, acknowledging what Harry was implying. How Ron could finally shine, free from Harry’s name and influence. It was Ron who should be Head Auror some day, Ron who loved the chase and the capture, who had the girl and the family to balance a job that could swallow someone like Harry up. It was amazing that Ron even wanted Harry around to distract people from that, from how incredible he had always been.

Hermione slipped into the hug, and Harry’s cheek smooshed into hers as Ron adjusted his grip. Hermione laughed, her breath skirting across his face in a wash of maple.

“Did you have pancakes?” Harry asked, intrigued.

Ron nodded and let them go. “I’ll heat some up for you.” He left them for the fridge, sorting through piles of homemade leftovers for Molly’s latest. Hermione tilted her head, inviting Harry into the hall.

Molly had disappeared, and they were alone with the redheaded portraits that lined the entry to the Burrow. Harry glanced around, seeing the lookalikes to his adopted family that he’d grown familiar with over the years. Great-aunt Marjoram winked at him, her face Ginny’s but her ample curves Molly’s. Harry blushed and looked away.

“It’s really Ginny?” Hermione was whispering, and she glanced over Harry’s shoulder at Ron, who was bustling about the ancient hob, directing heat with his wand. “Are you sure there isn’t a Horcrux in the Manor or something?”

“Come off it,” Harry whispered back. “The Aurors that came over this morning would have detected something.”

“Aurors came by this morning? Did they say something to make you change your mind?”

“No, I just… it just seems like they expect me. And I’m sick of doing what’s expected.” He stared into her steady brown eyes, hopeless to say more. But Hermione just kissed his cheek, gave it a pat, and nodded.

“Okay,” she said, voice back to normal. “But let me know if you need any help to figure something out. I hate to see you alone in that house, wasting your life.”

“I’m not-” Harry almost said _alone_ , but covered with “wasting my life.”

“Well, we wish you would go on a date or something. Hannah was asking about you.”

“Oi, yeah!” Ron poked his head into the hall. “Get back in here, weirdos. Let me tell you what she said.”

And they sat down together, Hermione gathering tea while Ron placed an army of leftovers in front of Harry. He loved them so much. Ron spun the story of Hannah’s casual question into a twenty-minute adventure, Hermione laughing at all the right parts, her hair bouncing against her head. Their laughter was everything to him, more precious than gold. They always accepted any shit he dumped on them, worrying for Harry at each step. He owed them the truth, but he wasn’t sure what that was yet. He thought about Draco’s pale face, saying _Harry_ , floating in a dreamworld, beside his in a nest of pillows. He’d have to tell Ron and Hermione something. But he didn’t know where to start.

Harry returned to the manor calmer than he’d left it. He stumbled from the Floo with a package of leftovers clutched against his chest, wrapped neatly but unknowingly for Draco by Molly. Harry had felt a pang of guilt when she’d handed it to him to bring back, but he knew she wouldn’t mind feeding Draco, whatever her prejudices, if she saw how thin he was.

It was the work of a minute to put the package away, and then Harry took the time to feed the koi and say good morning to a few carved serpents around the first floor before looking for Draco.

He’d been sure that Draco would have emerged from the walls by now, but the place was silent.

“Draco?”

Harry climbed upstairs, seeing at once that Draco’s bedroom had disappeared again. He sighed and knocked on the wallpaper where the door had been. It shimmered reluctantly. “Draco?”

Finally, seemingly stubbornly, the door appeared. Harry knocked again. “I brought leftovers.”

The door burst open, nearly hitting Harry in the shoulder. Draco smirked when Harry jumped back, but turned to let him in the room. Harry followed him over to the cupboard, where Draco had piled everything onto the carpet. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?” Draco sat back down on the floor. He was wearing charcoal trousers and a white undershirt now, and Harry had assumed that he was picking through the clothing to find a shirt to wear with it. But as he watched, Draco dug through the pockets of a winter coat, using his wand to lift every scrap of lint to his eyes for inspection.

“I can’t tell, honestly.” Harry hovered awkwardly behind Draco, not sure if he should sit. He hated hanging out in cupboards. “Can I help?”

“I highly doubt you can.” Draco gave Harry a once-over, and the dismissive ice of his gaze convinced Harry that he was upset. “Do you have an eye for luxury? No. Can you help me price out my wardrobe? No. Would anyone believe you were selling your own clothing? No. Can you get me access to a Gringotts account? No. Ah.” He found a Sickle in the pocket of another jacket, this one shifting colors softly from green to blue.

“You need money?” Harry was confused. “Don’t you have money?”

“I doubt it. My property is in your name right now, the Gringotts accounts may as well be, too. If they aren’t already.”

“Hey, I would have told you,” Harry pointed out, offended. “I’m not trying to steal from you. You’re the one who doesn’t want anyone to know they’re alive.”

“I just want to be safe,” Draco corrected. He picked up a pile of silky ties, let them slip through his fingers. “Safety takes money.”

Harry rather thought the world was safer than Draco was implying, but the panic that had kicked into both of them with a knock on the door stopped him. “I’ll find out about your account,” Harry promised. “I can ask the Ministry, and I’ll make sure you have access to it if you’re worried.”

“Thanks so much,” Draco cooed, his voice flinty with false gratitude. “I’m so glad you’re here to fuck with my house and talk to the Aurors for me.”

Harry could feel his hackles rising again. “You should be glad. I got rid of those guys.”

“You didn’t go off with them? FIll out a job application? As if you’d have to keep going past your name.” Draco shoved the pile viciously to the side. There were linen trousers wrinkling underneath everything: he checked them, too, before adding them to the pile. “There. I can live off of that for a year. I can’t sell Mother’s gowns, of course, but maybe some costume jewelry.”

“Where is this coming from?” In the months that Harry had been living at the manor, Draco had never seemed to want to leave. But maybe he hadn’t had the money to consider that an option. “Are you going somewhere?”

“Am I-” Draco glared up at Harry. His face was open and pained, and Harry finally saw the fear there. “No, you are.”

Harry gave up and crouched down, meeting Draco where he was at on the floor. “I’m not going anywhere, Draco. If I even consider it, you’ll be the first to know. I promise.”

“Promises,” the blond sniffed. “Well, I suppose the word of the future Head Auror is worth more than last season’s cast-offs. Or it will have to be.”

“For Merlin’s sake, I’m not going to be an Auror.” Harry wondered at his day. So far he’d had three versions of the same conversation, each one going worse than the last. “Didn’t you hear me telling them off?”

“Playing hard to get, more likely.”

“I don’t want to be an Auror.” Saying it to Draco, having Ron and Hermione know, made it feel real. Harry felt the truth of it settle in his stomach. “I’m not going into Training.”

“Of course you are.” Draco flapped his hand. “You know you are. You’re going to work with that blond idiot, and you’ll fuck off back to your Weasels, and I’ll just be the ghost that haunts your second home. It’s all very Pureblood of you, honestly. And me, if I die soon and do it properly.”

“You’re not going to _die_.” Harry sat all the way down on the floor. He picked up a shirt at random — it looked like a souvenir from the World Cup, and it felt like another world in which they’d both gone, Lucius and Fred alive beside them. “I’m not going anywhere and I’m not going to let that happen.”

“Gee, thanks. I just love having my life in your hands.” But the sarcasm belied Draco’s real fear. Harry paused, waited for him to get it all out. “Just another day where Potter can handle it. Where Potter decides who lives and who dies. You couldn’t just leave me with Greg in the Room of Requirement, no, you had to keep me alive to waste away in my ancestral home. Thanks. I don’t feel like waiting around for you to get bored of leaving bowls of water out for me.”

“So you don’t want me to leave, but you expect me to? Even though I’m saying I won’t. “ Harry didn’t try to hide his frustration from Draco. He’d hidden it from the Aurors, tried to control it in front of his friends. With Draco, he finally felt like he could roll his eyes. “Since when did you even want me to stay?”

“I don’t want you to stay, I need you to stay.” Draco shoved at Harry, perhaps to cover the weakness of his words. But his shove wasn’t much stronger.

Harry laughed, his confusion and tangled feelings finally evening out into something that made sense to him. “You’re so weak!” He shoved Draco back, and Draco threw a jacket into the air to climb over the pile for a better angle.

They’d fought before, with wands and fists and feet, and it felt right to do it again. When Draco managed to shove him over, Harry stuck an elbow in his face. Draco yanked on his hair, then yowled when Harry went for his.

Harry clambered back up to his knees, determined to bury Draco in his stupid cloaks. They scrabbled against each other for another moment, Draco weak but warm, his body long and slight against Harry’s, his hair fisted in Harry’s hand like a handful of golden silk.

Suddenly it wasn’t funny anymore. Harry could feel his body beginning to react to Draco, the dreams he’d tamped down suddenly faced with the physical reality of Draco’s breath on his arm.

Harry drew away a little, which allowed Draco to smack him right in the face. “Oi!” 

“Sorry! I thought you would block me, fuck.” Draco came closer, touching Harry’s face, and Harry turned his chin away before the other boy saw anything in his eyes… or noticed the beginnings of the erection that was threatening to make itself noticeable. “Are you okay?”

“Are you?” Harry drew his knees up to hide, hugging them tight to his body. Draco mirrored his posture a foot away, turning his body into matching origami. “I know you don’t have any reason to trust me, but I really don’t have some secret plan. I’m just as stuck as you are.”

“Not really.” Draco scratched his wrist. Harry had turned his hair into a mess, and it sat at all angles, looser and longer than Harry had ever seen it. “I feel better than I did before you came. Eating better. Now I know the world hasn’t exploded out there. But this is as far as I can go, isn’t it? It’s all reliant on you now. You feed me, you bring me pain potions—”

“I’m done with that, by the way,” Harry interrupted, trying to sound stern. He clenched down on his thigh muscles, taking control of his body back so he could listen properly.

“You bring me whatever I want. But I want more than you can bring me.” Draco put his cheek on his knees, and Harry scooted closer. He wanted so badly to touch Draco’s hair again, to fix the mess he’d made there. When Draco let out a long, ragged sigh, Harry let himself.

Draco just shut his eyes, letting Harry carefully put the strands back into place. Harry couldn’t stop watching his rough fingertips and bitten nails sliding through its softness, the way Draco’s ears and his closed eyelids looked like transparent, beautiful shells. “What do you want?”

“I told you, safety.” Draco sounded calmer now, more openly sad. He kept his eyes closed, so Harry didn’t stop petting his hair once it was fixed. He risked rubbing a thumb over Draco’s ear, and it was softer than it looked. Draco’s breath caught, and Harry pulled his hand reluctantly away.

“What else?” Harry waited for Draco to open his eyes, and caught his grey eyes with green.

Draco glanced away, but when he looked back again, the calm seemed to have stuck. “I want my family back. I want to go back to the time when I was just a spoiled kid and Voldemort was some story my dad told when he was drunk. Barring that? I want my home back, so it can stay with a Malfoy. I want the wizarding world back, shopping on Diagon and eating Elvish bread and using my own wand without someone covering for me. But that takes money and acceptance. I’m dead right now.”

“Undead,” Harry teased softly. Draco huffed out a laugh.

“I’m undead right now. No one is bothering to hate me. But to get anything back, I’d have to face everyone. The Ministry. Azkaban, probably. Everyone who hated my family, or who owed my dad revenge. Death Eaters who blame us for failing the Dark Lord. The fucking Gryffindor cartel, judging me every day of the rest of my life, poisoning any career or family I try to build.”

“You don’t know they’ll do that,” Harry lied.

“They ought to,” Draco insisted. “I may as well stay here. At least I’m choosing my own sentence. At least I can be with my things, and the grounds, and… you know.”

“What?”

Draco gave Harry a pitying look. “You, you idiot.”

“I’m not an idiot,” Harry said automatically, mostly for the sake of having something to say. _Him?_ “You want to be with me?” It sounded strange, put that way, but he was afraid to take it back.

Draco shrugged. “I’m lucky you showed up.”

Harry glanced over his shoulder, searching for something to say. The little plant on Draco’s desk that usually had a rain cloud covering it had cleared, an itty-bitty sun hovering in its place now. What could he say? That his nightmares had gone from dying in a forest to finding Draco dead in the walls of the manor? That his dreams had become lurid and haunting, starring the backs of Draco’s knees and the taste of his tongue? He couldn’t promise much on behalf of the wizarding world. He couldn’t make promises for Ron and Hermione, even, as he’d hidden Draco from them too. He could offer to fight for Draco, and he knew he would, but he’d just turned down the one job in which he could protect him. In the end, there was nothing to say, except “I’m lucky you were here.” 

They stayed in the cupboard for a little longer, sitting together but alone in their thoughts. Eventually Harry remembered the leftovers, and Draco stood when he mentioned them. He looked down at Harry, clearly hesitating, and then stuck out a hand to help him up. “Harry?”

Harry took his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all!!
> 
> So, I owe you all an apology/explanation! I am LOVING all of the thoughtful comments on this fic, and I apologize for the short and inconsistent updates. I lost one of my parents over the holidays, and it's been hard to focus on any of my hobbies. It does bring me so much joy to write and share this story, though, so I'm not giving up. :) I really appreciate everyone's patience, please do keep reading and commenting!


	21. Chapter 21

It felt weird to wake up the next morning, as though nothing had changed.

Harry stared at the ceiling. He’d gone back to the Florentine guest room, and its gilded canopy twinkled gaudily at him in the light of the morning. A fat angel painted onto the crown moulding was peeking in at him: he rolled over. Now he could see the door, dust motes floating in the sunlight between. How could it be, that past that door, was the sum of his summer? A patched-up mansion, a former enemy? Not Auror training, not Hogwarts classes, not the friends or family that had seem him to his eighteenth summer. Everyone who had been at his birthday party had barely mattered since.

Just past that door, was Draco. _Draco._ Not Malfoy. He’d never felt less like the Malfoy Harry had known, although he’d come to see that name in a whole new way. The ancient, noble historians and potioneers who lined the walls were worlds apart from the petty, standing-obsessed Malfoys he had known. The boy he was starting to...something. Like? He didn’t think it was worth denying anymore, really. He’d grown to like Draco, as a friend, as a person. As more. Even now, with the dull despair that had been building when he thought about what was coming after this summer, getting up to hang out with Draco made it all feel okay. At least for now.

He scraped himself out of the sheets and padded down the hall, where the smell of tea and reheated Weasley leftovers were leaking up the stairs. For a minute, he stood at the door to the drawing room, watching the back of Draco’s head. His bony shoulders rose up from the couch in a thin t-shirt and his long legs were propped up on the table in front of him. He was watching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off with the volume low, and as Harry watched, he laughed quietly at something Matthew Broderick was saying. He didn’t know if Draco’s low volume was coming from his months of isolation, or because he thought Harry was sleeping. Both possibilities made his heart clench.

“Hey.” He dropped over the back of the couch, sliding down so that he bumped into Draco before settling into place. Draco turned his lingering smile over to him.

“Good morning.”

Harry reached for Draco’s mug, and Draco actually handed it to him, tapping it with his wand to reheat the contents before he turned back to the screen. They finished watching the movie in silence — well, Draco did, barring his occasional chuckle. Harry mostly watched Draco, warm in the contentedness that he felt here, watching old films and watching Draco watch them too. Sharing tea, the sofa, and the home itself. He could almost imagine that the circumstances were different, that this was his life, with no extra complications.

After the movie Draco stood and stretched. “Did you eat?”

“I’m okay right now. Maybe after Quidditch.” Harry stretched his legs out, pointing his toes and wiggling them before he sent the mug flying back into the kitchen and stood himself.

“Quidditch, is it?” Draco sounded indifferent to the suggestion, but they both started heading upstairs without further discussion. Harry glanced over as they neared the door to the Quidditch room and found Draco looking back, both of them anticipating an attack from the other. They laughed, and then, feeling awkward, Harry let Draco enter first.

Harry took the morning plunge toward the ground in a cannonball, whipping the broom down and around just in time to shoot up from the air above the long grass below. He couldn’t help the shout that escaped him, the joy that the adrenaline of flying always brought his way.

They traced their normal paths, zigging and zagging the entire way. Draco had shown Harry how throwing a Bludger at the manor would make the manor shoot it right back, and they ran drills for the better part of an hour. Draco seemed stronger now. He tried a Woollongong Shimmy and a near-perfect Sloth Grip Roll, flying with a fervor that Harry hadn’t seen from him in years. He was panting when they touched down, his hair stuck all over his forehead like he’d just gotten fringe. Harry smirked, but refrained from saying anything, since his own hair was likely worse.

They’d touched down in the small clearing that Harry favored, around the back of the manor by the conservatory and a Victorian stone bench. The pond he’d moved the koi from looked inviting in the warmth of the day, an oval of cool water surrounded by long, sweet grass.

No sooner did the thought of how nice and cool it looked cross Harry’s mind before Draco was slipping his shoes off, hopping from one foot to another to unearth his shockingly pale feet. He stuffed his socks into the shoes before leaning down, cuffing his pants in a few practiced motions. “Fancy a dip?”

“What, get all the way in?” Harry peered into the water, surprisingly tempted. Only the thought of stripping down in front of Draco in broad daylight stopped him, the strange frisson between them unable to bear the weight of shirts shaken loose, of trousers slipping down.

“I think you’d turn into a fish,” Draco said dubiously, peering into the water. It was koi-free, but still swirling with some of the magic that had kept them fed and temperate. Harry laughed, then stopped when he saw Draco’s serious expression.

He kicked his shoes off instead, leaving them sideways and nowhere near his mismatched socks, which sank into the mud when he stepped on them. Draco puffed out a sigh of exasperation and twitched his wand, sending Harry’s things into a neat line next to his own.

They sat. The water was fresh and cool and it came up higher than Harry had expected, so it leached into the fabric of his jeans, darkening them up to his knees. From the ground, the manor rose up all the higher, its towers and tiles gleaming in the bright light.

“It’s beautiful,” Harry said without thinking. Beside him, Draco startled. He turned to see Draco studying him, his eyes soft but surprised. “It really is.”

One corner of Draco’s mouth picked up into a half-smile before dropping back down. He looked wistful, sad. But he didn’t say anything of the sort, just nodded to the gargoyle that lived beneath the eaves, the one that had tormented a young Draco, yet resisted destruction. It glowered at them from afar, its heavy brow reminiscent of Dudley. “Except that ugly fucker.”

“What ugly fucker?” Harry asked, the picture of nonchalance, as the gargoyle shattered into a million stone pieces.

Draco whooped as the chunks rained down the side of the house, leaving a cloud of dust and a pile of rubble that sent the peacocks running across the lawn. “Finally! Oh, I hated that thing. It always said I flew like a ponce.”

“What does that even mean?” Harry thought briefly of Adrian Pucey and the other queer Quidditch players he’d known. They’d all flown well, at least to his eyes. But maybe it made sense that an ancient statue would have outdated ideas.

“Less than nothing, but I lived in fear of my father hearing it.” Draco sighed and kicked his feet in the water. It splashed Harry a little, and he splashed back, but Draco didn’t rise to the challenge. Instead he seemed to be miles away.

Harry let him come back slowly. He knew when they went back inside, they’d have to change, face the rest of the day. He’d have to start thinking about Ron and Hermione and what he was going to do with his life, about Ginny’s departure, about how his friends were going to disappear into new jobs and relationships and cities.

Instead he watched the peacocks and scooted a little closer to Draco. Draco leaned in, pressing his chest to the side of Harry’s shoulder. Harry held his breath until they were wedged solidly together, until he could smell Draco’s Quidditch sweat, until his heart settled back to beating.

And then, like always, he pushed his luck.

“Hey,” Harry said softly, turning his chin so he was peering right into Draco’s face, their mouths so close that he had to ignore the pointed perfection of Draco’s teeth. Draco licked his lips, as if he saw where Harry’s eyes were drifting, as if he was anticipating something — a kiss, a telling-off for their shared space. “Wasn’t it your birthday before I got here?”

Draco frowned, clearly surprised. His troubled expression doubled, and for a moment Harry regretted bringing it up. He hated to make Draco think of it, a day marked by nothing special, alone with no family but the portraits, half-hidden in his own home. “Yes,” Draco said reluctantly, and he shifted, putting some space between them again. “Why do you mention it?”

Harry hesitated, but he’d already unleashed his inner Gryffindor. “Do you trust me?”

Draco laughed out loud at that. Harry was surprised that it hurt his feelings, and he pulled an elaborate frown at Draco when he stopped. “Sorry,” Draco said, smiling again now. He seemed genuinely amused. “I do.”

“You’re such a prick,” Harry grumbled, and Draco bumped his shoulder again. “Okay. But you can’t go into the magical world, right?”

“Fucking clearly,” Draco said, his patience depleted. “Spit it out, Potter.”

It was a long shot, Harry knew. But he’d had a spark of inspiration that he wasn’t about to ignore. He wanted to give Draco his freedom back, give him a gift he’d never been given, wanted to test their new relationship away from its containment to see if it stuck. So he said “what about the Muggle world?” and waited for the response.

Draco was hesitant, he could see that immediately. Afraid, even, but Harry thought that might be more to do with leaving the manor and less with the muggles. “I’ve never been,” he admitted, shifting on the grass. One of the peacocks came pecking closer, and Draco splashed at it absently. “I mean, I’ve gone to King’s Cross and the farms around here, but not their cities. Is it safe?”

Harry’s determination to get Draco into the muggle world doubled at hearing that. Was it safe? The whole world was out there, and he wanted to give it to Draco. Wanted to show him that there was more of it than the parts that had rejected him, that he felt betrayed by. He nudged Draco’s chest with his shoulder, bringing their arms into one long press of contact. “We’ll be together,” he said firmly. 

Draco nodded once, then again, more decisively. “Okay.” He still looked fearful, but determined, and Harry wondered how many childhood rules he was breaking by agreeing. “Okay, let’s go.”

“Can we Apparate from here?” Harry reached down his legs to roll his pants back down, but Draco huffed at him before standing.

“I’m not going into Muggle London dressed like this.”

Harry looked up at him, shading his eyes. Draco’s calves were bare, his trousers rolled up past golden-haired calves and hanging off of his narrow hips. His Quidditch shirt was the same he’d worn in school, sparking a hundred memories that felt like they were from another lifetime. And his hair was sweat-tousled, his face that same face that Harry had obsessed over punching a hundred times. He looked amazing, but Harry wasn’t about to say anything.

At least not anything but “Last one in is a Flobberworm.”

And if he let Draco run ahead to see more of the way those pants were fitting, he didn’t say anything either.


	22. Chapter 22

“Are you ready?”

Draco met Harry in the hallway, dressed for war. He’d swapped his Quidditch cast-offs for a suit of black: denim trousers that looked thick and expensive, topped by a lightweight henley that barely hung loose anymore. There was a coat slung over his arm, too, also black. The overall effect was that of blending into the shadows, with every detail polished and menacing in its elegance to anyone who dared to look twice. He had also run a cleansing spell over his hair, and it was still slicked back a little, reminding Harry forcibly of the way he wore it when they were kids. Draco tugged his hand through it again, looking nervous. “I think so. Can you do a Disillusionment on me?”

“Are you sure? Muggles won’t know you.” But Harry was already pulling his wand out. He was half-convinced that Draco would back out still, and he didn’t want to give him an excuse to start spiraling. “Want to look like me?”

“Perish the thought,” was Draco’s instant reply, but there was no heat in it.. He bit his lips as Harry came closer, shut his eyes when Harry’s wand brushed his cheek. “Just...make me look different.”

He didn’t want to. It felt like a loss just to pass his wand over the white-gold hair, rendering it a soft and nondescript chestnut. Draco still looked too good to him, too likely to stand out for his fine bones and the long lashes that were still squeezed shut. So Harry tapped his nose, turning it more into something like Pansy’s, and pushed lightly on Draco’s face until it pushed back, wider than before.

“How do I look?” Draco turned to the time-smudged mirror that sat above a console table, squinting at his face. His hands went to his hair first, and Harry stepped behind him, watching both of their reflections. Draco looked plain, like an off-brand Seamus, but there was still some essential Draco-ness to the lift of his eyebrows. Harry caught Draco’s eyes: he’d been staring too long.

“You look good,” he managed, after clearing his throat. “Very un-Malfoy.”

“I look un-Malfoy or good?” Draco’s strange face relaxed a bit with a new opportunity to mock Harry. “Those are mutually exclusive. Shall we do you?”

“Me? Oh.” Harry frowned at his own expression. “I suppose.” He cast a vision spell and plucked off his glasses, dropping them on the console table. Now Draco was the one looking too long, and Harry flushed. He knew most people didn’t see him without his glasses, and it wasn’t that he felt he looked bad without them, it was just a little like losing a security blanket. “How’s that?”

Draco nodded, but then hesitated and pulled his own wand out. “Can I?”

Harry agreed. He did hate being recognized, but more so, he wanted Draco to feel comfortably anonymous, especially if being seen with Harry Potter wasn’t a part of that. Draco’s wand felt warm on his scalp, and when it was drawn away, he had to try not to shiver. “Okay?”

Draco laughed, and Harry turned back to the mirror fully. He was a sandy blond now, and not pulling it off at all. “Sorry, I guess I can only be blond.” It clashed horribly against Harry’s skin, but at least it had kept its usual wild tufts and tangles.

“Wow,” Harry said, pulling a face at himself just to hear Draco laugh again before he darked it to the same middle brown as Draco. “Well, no one will recognize us now.”

“They’d better not,” Draco said grimly, and held his hand out. It took Harry a moment to remember what to do – take it, and squeeze. “I’m ready now.”

“Then let’s go,” Harry said, seizing his bravery, and whirled them away.

Despite the work it had taken to get Draco this far, Harry himself hadn’t put much planning into his idea. He had said it to be spontaneous, half-certain that Draco would say no immediately. While they’d redressed, he’d thought over a hundred places, of showing Draco Paris or Privet Drive, whirling through alleyways or awful memories. They could go anywhere, do anything, and that was too much to choose from. He wanted to give Draco a good impression of the muggle world, but in the end he’d rejected grand plans for the London Eye or the Eiffel Tower. He’d wanted to show Draco what the muggle world was to him.

Draco blinked at their surroundings. Harry had Side-Alonged him to the telephone booths outside Angel Station, and they were squashed in close. Behind Draco’s head, a red bus rattled down Islington High Street. He followed Harry onto the pavement, brushing against him without comment, then stopped to look around. Harry wondered how it looked to him, a pharmacy and a Pret and an HSBC. But all he asked was “where are we?”

“We’re… near my house. It’s not in a magical neighborhood,” Harry rushed to assure him, when Draco narrowed his eyes. “I thought I’d just show you the normal muggle stuff I do. We can go to Sainsbury’s.”

“What in Merlin’s name is Sainsbury’s?”

“See? Muggle stuff. There’s a Starbucks and a McDonald’s by here, you can’t beat that.”

Draco didn’t bother to ask what those were. He pulled his coat on, pulling it tighter around him as he looked around. He was trying to be inconspicuous, but his eyes were wide. With a twinge, Harry recognized his expression— it was the same one that Sirius had worn, right after being released from Azkaban. Muggle field trip or not, this was freedom, and he wasn’t going to let Draco waste it.

Harry steered them toward the water. Draco already seemed overwhelmed, keeping his hands in his pockets as they walked, his eyes on every stranger. They moved through a few blocks of shops and past the Row gardens, people being replaced slowly by a quiet peace. They slipped down the stairs to the waterway, the stillness of the cool waters reflecting the green of the trees above. A few small boats were pulled up to the cobblestoned shores, and a couple of people were walking their dogs, but they were mostly alone. Draco’s hands hadn’t left his pockets: Harry guessed he was touching his wand.

“What do you think?” he asked quietly, not wanting anyone to overhear as they passed. A family squeezed by them, and then they were alone again.

“So far so good,” Draco allowed. He couldn’t seem to focus on any one thing. He was still acting as if every shadow was dangerous, not that Harry blamed him. 

They hit a set of stairs, and Harry let Draco lead the way back up to the street. He hesitated, then went right, and Harry followed without complaint.

It was fascinating, watching the microexpressions changing on Draco’s face. He was so busy trying to read them that he almost stumbled into Draco when he stopped. “Can we sit somewhere?”

“Yeah, of course.” Harry nodded at the bus stop on the corner where they’d paused, its bench plastered in rain-damaged gig posters. “Here, it’s where the bus picks you up. Like the Knight Bus. But you can’t call these from anywhere so they stop here. On a schedule.”

He stopped babbling and Draco sat without responding. The bench seats were stiff and uncomfortable, but the lean-to gave them a modicum of privacy. Harry cast a quick wandless muffliato, and Draco’s eyes darted over to him. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

“I don’t think I’ll be caught.” But maybe that wasn’t what Draco meant. “You think they’ll attack us? I didn’t even take out my wand.”

“But I could sense the spell. They can’t sense it?” Draco was looking over every stranger that streamed past. An old woman whose bag was bursting with herbs. Two businessmen, hurrying back from lunch with flushed cheeks. A baby in the arms of its mother, just scrunching its face up to cry. None of them gave the two boys on the bench a second glance.

“Draco… what do you know about the muggle world?”

A bicyclist went past on the opposite side of the road, followed by a taxicab. A man took the trash out from the back of a restaurant. And Draco watched it all as though it were brand new.

“My father was so stupid,” he whispered. When Harry waited, he cleared his throat and kept talking. “I knew he was unkind. I knew he was vain. I knew he was… I knew him. But I never thought that he was stupid. I just thought he was doing the wrong things. Even when it was follow or die, when following was killing me… I thought he believed in what he was doing.”

“I think he did,” Harry said, not sure why it felt like assurance.

“No, he… he wanted what the Dark Lord meant for him. He liked it best with him gone, getting all the deference without any of the dirty work. But I thought he was pursuing something for himself. For the family. For purebloods.”

“Purebloods,” Harry scoffed, but Draco interrupted the rant that was forecoming.

“I know. I know. I know that now. You don’t understand.” He turned to Harry, and Harry saw fear in his eyes, now of what Harry would think. “I’m sorry, I know I can’t defend it. But I was taught the same way I was taught to read and to write that we were better. That we were special, and that there were people who hated us for being special, and that we had to protect ourselves. That muggleborn wizards just opened the door to more and more people who would hate us if they knew us. The Malfoy family has a long history, you know that. Some of us _were_ killed for being magical, and when you have to memorize your entire family tree, they don’t feel very far back.” He swallowed, and Harry looked for traces of the Malfoy he knew on an unfamiliar face.

“We had to protect our knowledge, because without tradition, there would be no magical way of education, of life. Extinction, they called it. And it scared me so much as a kid, these muggles with blood that may as well be dead without magic, that killed my grandmother’s grandmother. But then in school Granger was better than me. And you were...you were you. That was the first time I wondered if he was wrong.”

A bus rattled up to them, and Draco’s head jerked up. Harry waved it on, and it pulled away. The moment of rumbling broke the pause, Draco continued. 

“He was wrong. He was stupid. I thought he was acting on something real, but he didn’t know anything. Look at them.” Harry looked. A teenager across the street was trying to light a cigarette while being dragged by his dog, a phone pressed to his ear as he struggled. Two little girls were being chased by their harried father. Over and over again the scene in front of them was resetting and emptying and refilling itself with humanity. But Harry liked his neighborhood for its busyness, the way there was always a pub open or a takeaway to try. He felt anonymous there, tucked in unnoticed like a human version of Grimmauld Place.

“I’m one of them as much as I’m one of you,” Harry reminded Draco, and Draco considered him.

“Can you teach me?”

Twenty minutes later saw them in Sainsbury’s. 

“This is fascinating,” Draco said for the fifth time, staring down a vast aisle of soft drinks.

“How?” Harry wondered when Draco had been replaced by Arthur Weasley, but he definitely hadn’t thought Arthur’s curiosity was this cute.

“Look at how they stock this. They have to store everything in one place! No Summoning or replenishing. The cost to operate these places must be phenomenal. What do you know about the muggle economy?”

“Oh, um…” Harry tried bravely to think of anything he’d seen on the news lately, but he’d spent the summer playing Quidditch with Draco. “Not much.”

“Newspapers. We’ll find newspapers.” Draco was moving down each aisle with a speed that Harry had to hurry to keep up with. “Muggles have those, right?”

“They do,” Harry confirmed, though a little dryly. “Books, too, even.”

“Books are a good idea,” Draco said, missing Harry’s tone of voice. “Are those hobknobs?”

“Shut up, the only thing you know about in this place can’t be _hobknobs_.” Harry poked Draco, who turned back to him with a smile. He seemed relaxed now, more excited about the discoveries there were to be made now that they were snack-related and not Voldemort-related.

“They’re definitely magical, my mum loves these.” Draco was too distracted to correct the present tense.

“I actually believe that,” Harry confirmed, before he could notice. “Here, throw it in the cart.”

They assembled a heaping pile of biscuits and crisps, with an even mix of newspapers and celebrity magazines on top. Harry hadn’t thought to bring a backpack, so he hefted the bag over one shoulder, not wanting to lighten it magically if it would make Draco worry.

“Now what?” Draco asked, turning to Harry. “Do muggles have coffee?”


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which I just write things to satisfy my own id.

In the end they got beer. The York was stodgy and ancient, and it looked enough like the Hog’s Head that Harry thought Draco might feel at home. It seemed to be working, at least once he’d finished his first pint, and started looking around at people freely.

“What’s that?” he asked, nodding at a dish across the room. Harry laughed. They were tucked into a corner table, where they could spy on passerby through the draughty window. But Draco had zeroed in on a burger and chips being served instead.

“It’s a hamburger. Like a hot sandwich with a beef patty.”

“But it’s called a _ham_ burger?”

Harry shrugged. “Muggles are stupid.”

Draco’s shoulders shot up to his ears, but then he relaxed, recognizing the joke. “They’re a strange breed.”

“But great food,” Harry assured him, before signalling a server to their table.

Draco ate his way through a cheeseburger, two orders of chips, and half of Harry’s burger as well. It felt strangely comfortable, now that Draco didn’t look so much like a cornered animal, sitting out in the world and sharing a meal. Harry had worried that the peace between them was tied to the manor and its isolation, but it seemed to have gone into Islington with them. He only wished they’d done it before. Draco had lost so much over the last few months and years, it felt good to give him something, small though it was. Or maybe it wasn’t small, but it was just the start of what Harry wanted to give him.

Harry had never felt that way before, like a caretaker. He thought he finally understood Hagrid’s need to care for dangerous and exotic creatures: it made him feel less rudderless, having Draco to worry about in lieu of himself. It made him feel warm and proud and special, seeing Draco drip grease on the table and swipe Harry’s fries without any insults or fear.

It was still early afternoon, so they ate more than they drank, and Harry’s stomach was pleasantly full by the time they spilled back out onto the street.

“What’s next?” Draco asked, looking around. Someone brushed by him: Harry reached out and tugged Draco by the arm. They collided softly, bounced apart, and then Draco pressed more deliberately into him. Harry nudged back, and their elbows bumped, their hands tangling and separating in the ghost of an embrace.

“Whatever you want,” Harry assured him, his chest seizing with something he’d never known before. “You name it.”

Draco looked around, and Harry watched his eyes move from person to car to streetlight. “You know those things we watched?”

“The films?”

“Where do they come from?” 

Harry grinned. “Over here.”

He led Draco to the Screen on the Green, a janky old movie theater that belched the scent of stale popcorn onto the street every time someone stepped in under its neon sign. He tried his best to explain film crews and California on the way, but Draco didn’t understand two out of three nouns, and he point blank refused to accept that film cameras weren’t just magical photo cameras.

They’d arrived ten minutes into a nostalgic showing of Casablanca, but Harry talked the ticket-taker into letting them in anyway. They slipped past the snack booth and a series of posters and cut-outs advertising upcoming films, Draco looking around more openly now that he’d had a couple of pints. 

“Is this like Back to the Future?” Draco asked at full volume as they slid into the dark theater, and Harry had to fight the urge to laugh. 

“Shh, no,” he whispered, tugging Draco down into a seat with him. The theater was near-empty, and onscreen a woman was selling her diamonds at Rick's Cafe Americain. “This is old. It’s before they figured out how to use color and it takes place during World War 2. In Morocco.”

“Fascinating, was this the muggle war—”

“Shh,” Harry repeated, and squeezed Draco’s hand to shut him up. Draco swallowed his words and jerked his head around, eyes wide on Harry before the screen darkened again. Half-embarrassed, Harry let his hand go.

He aimed his blush at the screen and waited for the moment to pass, which it did easily, as Draco was engrossed in the scene at Rick’s right away. Ilsa. Victor Laszlo. As Time Goes By, and Rick’s secret pain. The black and white and grey of the screen flickered over Draco’s altered face, casting it in monochromatic and dramatic lines. As much as Draco was sucked into the film, Harry was sucked into watching Draco watch it, glancing over as often as he watched the screen. Confessions of love, a train station in Paris, a daring escape. _Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life._

At one point Harry looked over and Draco was crying, silent tears just barely escaping his lower eyelashes to his underfull cheeks. _It might be a good idea for you to disappear from Casablanca for a while._ Onscreen, Rick and Renault were wrapping up their lines. In the theater, Harry reached for Draco’s hand again.

This time Draco squeezed back.

When the credits rolled, the other people in the theater left, one by one abandoning Harry and Draco to a silent darkness. It felt like Harry held his breath until Draco let go of his hand. He sighed, a long and ragged breath that matched the way Harry was feeling — no film needed.

“I liked that one more than the others,” Draco said finally, as the lights came back on around them.

“There are a lot of old films we should watch,” Harry agreed. “And we can come back for the next classic they show.”

“Yeah?” Draco rubbed his hands together, looking shy, and reached for the bag of snacks and magazines at their feet. “I’d like that. This was a good belated birthday idea.”

“I’m glad.” Harry couldn’t help the smile that broke over his face, and the watery, small smile Draco gave him in response felt like winning the Quidditch World Cup. 

He didn’t want to leave the safety and peace of the theater, not really, but a teenager came in with a broom and dustpan and they let themselves be kicked out. It was the best date Harry had ever been on, and it wasn’t even a date.

It had started getting dark while they watched the movie, and they emerged into a cooling world, brushed with elongated shadows. More people were on the street now, heading home from their jobs to their families, and they crowds pushed them a little closer together as they went down the street, both lost in thought. Harry wanted to hold Draco’s hand again, but the dark of the theater and the swell of Casablanca’s score were gone. Instead he held tight to their bag of goodies and tried to see things through Draco’s eyes. He must have be exhausted, taking it all in, but he hadn’t said anything about going home yet.

“Is your house Grimmauld Place?” he asked instead, surprising Harry.

“Yeah. Does this block look familiar?” They were getting closer with each step they took, approaching the corner store that Harry and Ron bought their booze in, the businesses turning into apartment buildings around every corner. “Like from when you were a kid?”

Draco snorted. “I told you, no muggle London allowed. It’s weird to think I’ve been here before, though.”

“Just around here, actually.” Harry gestured at the sign above the street they were approaching. “Two blocks down on the left. Want to see it?”

Draco hesitated, but followed him, glancing at each building they passed as though he’d recognize Grimmauld in the next one. “Mum used to take me. We’d Floo in and stay overnight sometimes, I think especially if they’d been fighting. Is there still an awful old portrait that yells at you?”

“She yells at you, too?” Harry was surprised. “I thought she just didn’t like me for being muggleborn.”

“She hates everyone equally,” Draco assured him. It was strange again, how much they had in common, how non-strange it felt. They swapped a few more Grimmauld stories, and Harry found himself wondering aloud at how to fix each separate horror. Sure, the portraits were bitter and the spiders had taken over the attic, but after Malfoy Manor Harry was starting to think that it wouldn’t be such a hard fix, after all.

“I bet that family tapestry would be a good place to put a screen instead,” Harry was musing, to Draco’s horror, when they reached the right stretch of homes. Grimmauld Place untucked itself from its neighbors and wrenched into view, popping up where nothing had been a few steps ago.

“They don’t notice that?” Draco shook his head. A few people were passing by, no one giving a second glance to the mansion that had appeared out of nowhere. “It’s like they’re blind or something.”

“They’re missing a different sense, I guess,” Harry shrugged. “They do okay without it.”

“I actually believe that now,” Draco conceded. He stuck his hands in his pockets and stared up at the mansion. Harry could see his thoughts, the attempt to pin memories on the shapes of different towers and windows.

“Do you want to go in?” He wasn’t sure what made him say it, but he didn’t expect to see Draco’s eyes widen in horror. “What?” Draco was still staring past him, so Harry turned to see what he was looking at.

Hermione.

She hadn’t seen them yet, and Harry reached for Draco’s sleeve, tugging them back behind the stoop they stood near. Hermione had blended into the crowd, but now her hair was fully visible, along with her trademark overloaded bookbag. She was sifting through the pages of a book now, bustling along half-reading. The sight of her warmed Harry’s heart, as always, but he turned away, pretending to be preoccupied with the grocery bag as she passed across the street. It felt wrong to ignore her, but their disguises wouldn’t fool someone as smart as her, and he waited for her to disappear into the wards before speaking again.

“Maybe we don’t go in, then.” He nodded past Draco at the sidewalk they’d just come down. “Head that way?”

Wordlessly, Draco did. Harry followed him for a block or so, back past the liquor store, back to the bus stops and metro stations of High Street. It was hard to keep up with Draco now, and he could tell from the sinking in his stomach that he’d pushed Draco too close to discovery, that their day had just been ended. 

They made it back to the waterway and down into the canal. Once they were alone again, surrounded by cool cement walls and quiet water, Draco spun around. “We have to go back.”

“It’s okay, she didn’t see us.” Harry tried to touch Draco’s shoulder, but Draco pulled away. “Even if she had, it’s just Hermione.”

“It’s not up to you what’s “just” anything.” Draco’s fear was back, recognizable even through the brown of his transfigured eyes. “I’m not ready. We haven’t even talked about it. She doesn’t even know, right? You’ve been hiding me from everyone, that has to be for a reason.”

“Because it’s what you wanted, you berk. I was following your lead.” Harry felt himself being plunged back into another argument with Draco’s fear, another unwinnable battle against the self-defenses that had kept Draco hidden away and alive.

“Was it following my lead to take me to muggle London? Some fucking lunch date?” Draco shook his head, looking regretful. “I shouldn’t have agreed. I’m not safe here.” 

“Muggles aren’t dangerous!” Harry threw his hands up, confusion warring with the sweet spark that the word _date_ had sent through him. He couldn’t keep track of what was happening and what they were actually acknowledging anymore. “We just had a great day, I thought.”

“It’s not the muggles,” Draco admitted. Harry stepped up onto the bridge with him, and Draco took a step back to keep their distance. “It’s just too careless. You brought me to your house, where people who could recognize me live. Why? Do you want us out of the manor so badly? Do you hate being trapped with me? Because you can leave anytime.” Harry cursed himself internally. He just hadn’t thought about it. He’d wanted to share something of himself with Draco, the way Draco had reluctantly ended up opening his home to him. 

“I know I can!” he shouted instead, meeting his confusing feelings with anger the way he always had. “I want _you_ to leave. I wanted you to have some freedom, fuck, how is that a bad thing? And if we see Hermione, is that really the worst thing either? She’s my best friend, she won’t turn you in to anyone.”

“Would you say that about Weasley? Would she keep a secret from him? They’ll just assume I brainwashed you over the summer. They might even think they’re helping you by turning me in.” Draco shook his head. “I have to go back.”

“Fine,” Harry spat, his anger now merging with his magic until it hurt his chest. “Go on. Run home. Waste away in the walls again. Die in there like a rat, if that’s what you want so badly.”

“You have no idea what I want.” Draco’s expression was sad.

“You could try telling me. Or wait, you did that. Safety. Safety, at the cost of your entire life, at the cost of the whole fucking world.”

“Like you’re so much better, hiding along with me.” A couple passed by on the far side of the water, and both of them quieted for a minute, staring at each other until they were alone again. Draco’s eyes were huge, and Harry felt somehow out of breath. He was hurt, though he didn’t know why. He _had_ been hiding. Part of him had just thought that Draco had wanted him there.

He tried to school his thoughts into some semblance of order. As usual, Draco had him confused about how he felt and what he thought and what they were really fighting about. He was sorry, he was angry, he was upset, and he didn’t know who to aim it at. “I’m not saying I wasn’t. But we can’t hide forever. Eventually you have to make some kind of life, and I have to go back to mine.”

“Why haven’t you already?” Draco shot at him. “I thought I could trust you, but you clearly can’t wait to be rid of me.”

“That’s not it, you’re better now, I want—”

“What about what I want?”

“You’re wrong!” Harry could feel his magic building in his gut, and he fought to hold it down. “We can’t stay there forever. You know we can’t.” He hadn’t wanted to admit it, really, but it felt truer than ever out here in the fresh, free air. He was tired and wanted to go home to the manor, but he wanted to be able to come back, wanted this day to be the start of Draco’s freedom. It was so frustrating to think of the world around them, the world Draco had wanted to know more about all day long, disappearing again.

“If you hate it so much, you may as well leave,” Draco said, voice turning cold. “You have that option, but it’s the only place I can still be a Malfoy. I can’t pick and choose like you. The supermarket is cute and all, but I’m not a fucking muggle and our own world doesn’t want me to be alive.”

“ _I_ do,” Harry insisted. “ _I_ want you to be alive. But I also want you to _live_.”

Draco scoffed. “You don’t know what you want.” And that hurt to the core. Because as confused as Harry was, as surprised as he would have been a year ago to have given up Ginny, to reject Auror training, he _did_ know what he wanted. Who he wanted. And he had thought that Draco knew it, too.

So “Fuck you,” he managed, eyes suddenly smarting. “Just get eaten by the house, then. You deserve each other.”

“Fuck _yourself_ ,” Draco hissed, and shoved him. Harry hadn’t even realized he’d stepped close again, but Draco’s push sent him stumbling back on the bridge’s slope. So he did what his raging magic and complicated feelings and history with Malfoy had always made him do: he dug his heels in and swung.

It wasn’t one of their cleaner fights: there was wrong-colored hair in his eyes and Harry was forced to swing out blind with his elbows. Draco shoved him again, and this time Harry went down hard on one knee. He headbutted Draco in the stomach and pulled him down too, Draco’s hand fisting and yanking in Harry’s hair even as he fell. Then they were a tangle on the ground, mud and punches flying until everything hurt and Harry could barely see a thing

It felt good to touch. He pushed his hair back in time to feel his nose crunch under the base of Draco’s palm, to see the split lip that he’d somehow already caused. He swore, and Draco smiled, his savage grin dripping blood.

“It’s not fucking funny,” Harry snarled. His knees stung like he’d ripped through his jeans and into the skin with the fall. He levered himself upright with a vicious yank on Draco’s arm, drawing himself up to face the other boy properly. 

“Oh no.” Draco’s black shirt was twisted and stretched from Harry’s hand. It was getting dark outside now, twilight coloring everything differently than they had looked a few charmed hours ago. It was a colder light, matched by the cooling air, the ice cold flint of Draco’s most Malfoyesque expression. “It’s hilarious.”

Draco glanced down at Harry’s hold on him. It was a tight grip, and not strictly necessary anymore, but Harry hadn’t released him yet. Pain made him sway a little:, Draco moved with him before he captured Harry’s forearm, just as hard as Harry must have been holding onto him. The world had shrunk down to the pain in Harry’s arm and head and hand and the sound of Draco’s voice and the unreadable expression in his eyes.

Harry kissed him. 

It was an awkward surge, a bump of noses that sent an arc of excruciating pain through Harry’s face. But Draco’s mouth was cool and stretched in a scowl that changed, subtly, into something softer. 

And then, with a pop, he disappeared.

Harry was left kneeling on a bridge in the twilight, his knees burning and his nose on fire. He moved his hand through the air that Draco had left behind, breaking the Statue of Secrecy, putting himself at risk to go home and hide.

Harry didn’t know why he was surprised.


	24. Chapter 24

Harry made the walk back to Grimmauld with a busted nose and a stranger’s face.

He was too furious, fuming, consumed with thought. He didn’t even remember through the pain and the anger what he looked like, until he opened the front door and Hermione stuck her wand in his face.

“It’s me!” he said quickly, raising his hands. “Sorry, it’s a glamour, sorry.”

“What’s my cats name?” Hermione demanded, not relenting. A spark tumbled out of her wand and skittered across the old carpet. 

“Crookshanks, come on Hermione, the house let me in.”

“Not sorry,” she said, and quickly restored Harry’s normal features before storing her wand away. “What happened?”

“Looks like you’ve been brawling with Malfoy,” Ron added, popping in with what looked like an entire turkey leg in his hand. “Cor, do you ever wish that fucker was still alive just so you could punch him again?”

Harry didn’t join in when they laughed. _Draco._ He was already worried about him, missed him, wanted to chase him back to the manor and shout at the walls that he was sorry. But he’d meant everything he’d said. Everything he’d done. And as much as he wished he could take back the memory of their brief, frantic kiss, it was already too precious to ever let go of. No matter how Draco had reacted.

The fucker.

He still didn’t know why he felt so rocked by the last ten minutes. The whole walk over he’d been sorting through each frenzied second, trying to make sense of it all together. Most surprising was that he felt any shock, that he hadn’t seen this coming. If he had been honest with himself a month ago, he would have known already the way he felt about Malfoy. If he had been smart for one fucking second, he would have remembered that they had always hated each other. Somehow both had gone ignored, both had gotten confused, and both things now hurt him equally.

“So what happened?” Hermione tucked her wand back into her pocket and touched his nose with concern. “Want a fix?”

“I think it looks better this way,” Ron said helpfully, and ran away when Harry tried to smack him. He gave chase, and cornered Ron in the sitting room, grabbing for the drumstick in a brotherly fight that felt a world away from the one he’d just finished. “Don’t you dare,” Ron laughed, cradling his prize to his chest like an infant. “I’ll poke you in the nose.” 

Ron plopped down onto the ancient ottoman and patted the spot next to it. Harry dropped into the space under Ron’s shoulder, leaning back and shutting his eyes so he could think in the framework of Ron’s long arm. The cushion compressed, Hermione crowding in next to him.

“Spill it,” she said, before setting about fixing his face.

“Yeah, what are you even doing here? I thought you’d be at the manor.”

“Hmmm,” Hermione added, sounding thoughtful. Harry kept his eyes shut to avoid whatever look she was giving him.

“Came to get my nose fixed so I wouldn’t Eloise Midgen myself,” he suggested, and then hissed when Hermione’s _episky_ hit. “I thought I’d practice with a bludger and when it got me I realized there was no point running Quidditch drills without Ron, anyway. Plus you could have saved my nose.”

“But would I?” Ron mused, and grinned when Harry elbowed him. “I could come over there to fly, I suppose. Or we could just go to the Burrow, I know it’s your space or whatever.”

The last words had the stink of Hermione all over them, and Harry finally opened his eyes to study her. He found her already looking at him, her rich redwood eyes seeing, as always, to the heart of him 

He hated lying to them. It was antithetical to how he loved, lived, had survived. He had chased them away this summer, physically and emotionally both. It was past time to let them back in. Them, instead of _fucking_ Malfoy, who was immovable and implacable and utterly lost to him.

“I want you to come over,” he decided. “I’m done hiding. Bring everyone.”

“Like a party?” Hermione asked, her nose scrunching up.

Ron, on the other hand, brightened. “Can we trash the Malfoy place?”

“No,” he said quickly, imagining how badly that would upset the koi. “But Ginny’s going away, right? We could do her party there? Or is that weird?”

“It’s definitely weird,” Hermione assured him, but she seemed to relax a little. “But you own it now, so maybe it’s a good way to start its next chapter. Besides, when we had your birthday here at Grimmauld, I had a half-dozen people texting me about finding the place.”

“Why doesn’t anyone Floo call anymore?” Ron asked, sounding pained. “Those little tellyphones don’t even fit in my hand.”

Hermione sighed. “People can’t Floo call from the street, which is why you need a mobile phone for emergencies.”

“I’m training to be an Auror, what emergency calls for a tellyphone instead of Auror reflexes?”

“The kind like we’re out of milk and I need to call you? For the last time, Ronald…”

Harry shut his eyes again, comfortable in the white noise of their familiar arguments. His nose still hurt: he knew it was a phantom pain, but it was easier to focus on than the hurt in his chest. Even now Draco was likely licking his wounds, shutting off walls, dumping Harry’s things into the lawn to be shat on by Betty White and Garuda.

Around him the bickering had moved on from mobiles onto the emotional labor involved in buying Arthur’s father’s day gift, which had clearly been kicking around the argument bank since June.

“Can I sleep here tonight?” he interrupted, before the fight could kick into some new gear.

It worked— Ron dipped his chin to look back at Harry. The angle made him look ridiculous. “Sleep, mate?” he said incredulously, over the top of Hermione’s _of course_. “We’re not sleeping. We’re staying up all night planning a party.”

Harry laughed: so be it. It wasn’t like Draco could hate him anymore.


End file.
